Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part One of this article series, we describe the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is publish great content consistently to begin attracting new traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase of the traffic automation process. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we discussed the configuration phase.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this section, we explain how to set up various plugins that can help drive new traffic automatically to your website just by posting new content on a consistent basis.
Why You Should Consider Automating The Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which marketing gurus you talk to, you could find yourself spending a couple of hours per day (or more) promoting your business on social media, as well as trying to manage your business, your content and your web presence.
Many businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise doing. If you spend half your day checking LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook in addition to planning and writing articles for your website or blog, how can anything else in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
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.
A study of small businesses conducted by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent six or more hours each week on social media (the other half spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This use of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was done today, the numbers would most likely be significantly higher.
- More than half of all small 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 each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and budget and many business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. These companies can and will make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without prior warning. Why invest so much time and effort building content on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other sites.
Investing in automation to save time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited time, budget, and resources. For example:
- Which of these channels do you invest more budget, efforts, and time 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 the benefits of building content on 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 I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that allows you to automate your traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more budget, time, and your efforts on,
- Invest most of your 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 strategies, websites, solutions, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of services like YouTube, Facebook, Google.
(Automating your web traffic does not have to involve the use of black hat methods!)
The purpose of this article is to show you how to be smart with your limited resources and automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from websites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, most businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited time, resources, and budget.
So, instead of posting content to different channels, which can be extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to different services one at a time can be very time-consuming!)
Why not do this 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 your content distribution to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media channels and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content automatically to other blogs and web properties using RSS
- Automatically import content (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 explained in Part 2. Then, configure it as described in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you then automate the process with plugins such as the ones shown in the section below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a few traffic-generating plugins that can be used to:
- Distribute content to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content to other sites via RSS feeds
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn and more as soon as you publish your content using a WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with loads of great features.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Distribute your posts to several social sites.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings appear in your post publishing box.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new posts will be automatically shared online.)
Go here to learn more about this plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress built-in commenting system allows your site users to interact with your site, post comments, reply to other users and engage with your content.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature using a third-party plugin that integrates with social media, helping to spread and share them online.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can improve user engagement on your web site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like the ability to add twitter usernames to comments, SEO backlinks, social enticements for sharing your content, and ability to use keywords in the username. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they enter their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included with their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website or blog.)
Visit the plugin website to learn more about this handy plugin:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that allows you to syndicate and drip-feed content to dozens of online sites, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate and drip-feed your content to many social websites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to over 30 authority websites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Folkd, Kippt, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Sett, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
Visit this site to learn more about using this great plugin: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get actionable information about your content distribution campaigns), we have created a detailed article listing several social media measurement tools and technologies that are worth knowing about. For more details, go here:
The above are just some examples of the many content distribution plugins that WordPress makes available.
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 System: Content Distribution Process – Summary
Once your website or blog and plugins have been fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do to automatically start attracting web traffic is post content on a consistent basis.
We have created an entire email course designed to help you come up with limitless content for your site:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as can be improved. This step is covered in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Part 4
To keep reading this article, click here:
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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