Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to drive visitors automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part 1 of this article series, we described the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is add new content consistently to generate more traffic!)
In Part 2, we discuss the setup phase. We help you understand 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 website, and what to do if your existing site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we focused on the configuration phase of the traffic automation blueprint.
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 will configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section, we explain how to set up various plugins that can drive new traffic automatically to your site when you begin adding web content regularly.
Why Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which experts you get your advice from, you could end up investing 1-2 hours or more every day posting content on social media in addition to managing your business, your content and your web presence.
Most businesses simply lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts recommend doing. If you spend half your day checking Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing content for your blog or website, how will you get anything else in your business done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours simply keeping their businesses up and running. Source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their time trying to keep their businesses up and running. On top of this, 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 at least 6 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 usage of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research 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 to create a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media was the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time promoting and marketing themselves online in order to compete and survive, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and budgets and many areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social media websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or StumbleUpon. These companies can and will make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on someone else’s asset? With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can control your own real estate and post your content automatically to other sites.
Automating systems and process to leverage time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth 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 marketing channels should you invest more budget, efforts, and your time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that belong to other companies (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic Generation With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that lets you automate the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should invest more time, budget, and your efforts on,
- Invest most of your time 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 recommend avoiding black hat techniques, sites, solutions, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the terms of service and policies of sites like YouTube, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not need to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this series of articles is not to game online services or flaunt their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and marketing efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites frequented by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen in the previous section that most small business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts advise. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited time, budget, and resources.
So, instead of choosing this approach …
(Posting content to services one at a time is very time-consuming!)
Why not choose this time-saving strategy 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 channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social services and 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 get all this done?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress site as explained in Part Two. Then, expertly configure things as described in Part 3. After all this is in place, you can then automate your content distribution with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at a number of plugins that can be used to:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically via RSS feeds to other web properties
Jetpack Plugin
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 many great functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts automatically on several social sites.)
After all of the account and plugin settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account details show in your publishing box.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically get shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they are automatically distributed online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides a hands-free way to get more exposure online for your content on social media websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting system allows your site users to engage with your web site, post new comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature using a third-party commenting plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates your comments with social media, helping to spread and share your content online.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they plus1, like, or tweet your post. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they are entering their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which can be included with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and traffic and improve user engagement on your site.)
Visit this site to learn more about this plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – Content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget plugin that lets you drip-feed content to over 30 traffic-generating sites, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed your content to dozens of online sites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to dozens of social sites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Delicious, Folkd, Instapaper, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
Go here to learn more about this plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get useful information about your content marketing efforts), go here to learn more about social media monitoring tools that are worth knowing about:
The above are just some 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 Automation System: Content Distribution Stage – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do is post content on a regular basis to automatically begin bringing more traffic.
We have created a complete email training series aimed at helping you come up with limitless 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 explained in the next article in the WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
- Web Traffic Blueprint Part Five – Learn How To Automatically Get More Web Visitors For Your Business
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"I love the way your email series "Infinite Web Content Creation Training Series" is documented and presented. It is very absorbing and captivating. The links and tutorials are interesting and educational. This has motivated me to rewrite my content following the concepts I am learning from the email series." - Mani Raju, www.fortuneinewaste.com
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