Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part 1 of this article series, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to start generating more traffic is publish fresh content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we looked at the configuration phase of the traffic automation system.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure all the settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, we will discuss ways to automate traffic to your website using WordPress plugins.
Why You Should Consider Automating The Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which marketing expert you listen to, you could end up trying to spend a couple of hours or more each day posting content on social media, as well as managing your business, your content and your online presence.
Most small businesses simply lack the time, resources and financial means to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts advise. If you spent hours posting updates on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook in addition to planning and writing content for your blog or website, how would anything else in your business ever get done?
(Keeping their business up and running is how most small businesses spend their time. Infographic: NFIB)
Small business owners spend most of their time simply keeping 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 done by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent 6 or more hours per week on social media (the other half of businesses surveyed using social media 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 conducted today, the numbers would probably be even higher.
- More than half of all small businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more to create a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media consumed the most time online.
(Small businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and marketing budgets and many different business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other 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 have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. These companies can make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building content on someone else’s real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other websites.
Automating business systems and processes to leverage time is not new. Businesses have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increased availability of so many new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited marketing budget, time, and resources. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you focus more of your efforts, budget, and your time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Web Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method for automating your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should invest more budget, efforts, and time on,
- Invest most of your time and efforts building your own asset instead of someone else’s 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 recommend avoiding black hat solutions, strategies, sites, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of sites like YouTube, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not need to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this article series is to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and increase your exposure online to sites used by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen in the previous section how most business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, time, and resources.
So, instead of using this time-consuming approach …
(Posting content to marketing channels one at a time can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose this one 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 channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media services and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as described in Part 2. Then, configure your site settings as explained in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you can then connect all of the dots using plugins like the ones discussed in the section below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a few traffic-generating plugins that can:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content to other web properties via RSS
Jetpack by WordPress.com
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+ and more as soon as you publish your content using a plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many great functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (which you would have set up in Part Three.) …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack – Publicize)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Distribute your posts automatically to several social media sites.)
After all of the settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings displayed in your post publishing box.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically get shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it is automatically distributed online.)
Visit the plugin site for more information about the benefits of this plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress built-in commenting feature allows your site users to interact with your web site, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions as part of an online community.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature with a number of 3rd-party plugins that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share them online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they like, tweet, or plus1 your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they enter their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included with their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your site.)
Go here to learn more about using this plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a plugin for WordPress that allows you to automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to over 30 online websites, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate content automatically to many authority websites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to dozens of authority sites, including:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Plurk, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, go here: 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 efforts), we have written a comprehensive article on social media monitoring tools that will help you identify new trends and opportunities, track competitor activity, see what online conversations are taking place that affect your business,etc. To learn more, go here:
The above are just a few 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 Automation System: Automated Content Syndication Process – Summary
Once you have your website or blog and plugins expertly configured and fully set up, all you then have to do to start generating new traffic is post new content on a regular basis.
If you need help coming up with unlimited great ideas for content that you can post on your site, we recommend subscribing to our FREE email training series on growing your business with content marketing here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is explained in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read more, click on the link below:
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