Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to turn your site into an automated traffic machine using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part 1 of this article series, we provide an overview of the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is add content regularly to begin attracting more traffic!)
In Part Two, we looked at critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In Part 3, we discussed the configuration phase.
Here, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this section of the article series, we will look at ways to automate traffic to your website using plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate The Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which marketing gurus you talk to, you could end up trying to spend an hour or two (or more) every day posting content on social media while also trying to manage your business, your content and your online presence.
Many small business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise doing. If you are spending half your day posting updates on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter in addition to planning and writing articles for your blog or website, how will you get anything in your business done?
(Keeping their business up and running is how most small businesses spend their working hours. Infographic: NFIB)
Many businesses spend most of their working hours trying to keep their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and make sales in order to survive.
Marketing research done by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent six or more hours per week on social media (most of the other businesses surveyed that used social media spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was done today, the figures would most likely be significantly higher.
- More than half of all businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more creating a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media was their most time-consuming online activity.
(Businesses are spending more time marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and marketing budget and many business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on various social media websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or StumbleUpon. These companies often will make decisions that impact your business without prior warning. Why invest so much effort and time building content on someone else’s asset? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can have complete control of your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Automating systems and process to leverage time is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the availability of so many new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited time, resources, and marketing budgets. For example:
- Which of these channels do you focus more budget, time, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that lets you automate the traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more of your time, efforts, and your budget on,
- Invest most of your time and efforts building your own asset and still benefit from other people’s marketing channels.
Many automated web traffic solutions tend to focus on black hat methods, such as manipulating search engine results. This is not what the focus of this article series is about. In fact, we strongly urge you to avoid using black hat solutions, techniques, sites, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the terms of service and policies of sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Google.
(Web traffic automation does not have to involve using black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this series of articles is to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and efforts, and increase your exposure online to sites frequented by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, most business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to individual marketing channels can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose this time-saving method instead …
(Set up an automated content distribution, lead and traffic generation, and sales and marketing system with WordPress)
With an expertly configured WordPress site, you can build more than just a website for your business … you can set up an automated traffic and lead generation and sales & marketing system, where all you do is publish your content and WordPress then automates the rest.
With WordPress, you can publish content once, and automate the distribution of your content to all other services.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) automatically to other blogs and web properties using RSS
- Import content automatically (e.g. videos)
As your business evolves, you can add more functionality and automate processes like:
- Sell products and services with e-commerce,
- Capture leads with opt-in forms and add your subscribers to newsletters and autoresponders,
- Allow visitors to register on your site with different membership levels,
- And so much more!
You can do all of this using inexpensive WordPress plugins. Once these plugins are installed and configured on your site, just direct your visitors to the appropriate sections (e.g. your store, subscription forms, membership area, etc.)
How do you get all this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as shown in Part Two. Then, expertly configure everything as explained in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you then automate these processes using plugins such as the ones shown in the following section.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic System – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at some examples of plugins that can be used to:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically via RSS feeds to other blogs
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and more as soon as you publish new content using a plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many useful features.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part 3 …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack – Publicize)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Distribute your posts to several social media networks.)
After configuring all plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account details show in your publishing section.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your posts are automatically distributed online.)
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, go here: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting feature that lets your visitors interact with your website or blog, post comments, reply to other users and engage with your content as part of a social community.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature using 3rd-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share them online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can create more user engagement on your website or blog. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like ability to use keywords in the username, search-indexable backlinks, social enticements for content sharing, and adding twitter handles to comments. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which can be included below their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and improve user engagement on your website or blog.)
To learn more about this great plugin, go here:
Social LinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin that lets you drip-feed content, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed content automatically to dozens of authority platforms)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to many online platforms, like:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Diigo, Kippt, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
Visit this site to learn more about this handy plugin: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get actionable information about your content distribution campaigns), we have written a comprehensive article where we explore a number of social media tracking tools that you may want to check out. For more information, go here:
The above are just a few examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating and syndicating the distribution of your content online.
Kickstart Your WordPress Traffic System
After your traffic automation system has been set up, we recommend kickstarting the process of driving traffic to your site with the steps shown in this tutorial:
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Automated Content Distribution Phase – Summary
Once you have your website or blog and plugins configured and set up, all you have to do then is add new content regularly to start driving web traffic.
We have created a complete email course aimed at helping you never run out of great content ideas for your website or blog:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is covered in the next article in our WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read more, click on the link below:
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"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie
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