Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part 1, we describe the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to automatically attract web traffic is post fresh content regularly!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase. 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 site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we focused on important configuration decisions.
Here, we configure all the settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you will configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, you will learn how to set up various WordPress plugins that can help bring visitors automatically to your website or blog simply by posting new content.
Why Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which marketing gurus you listen to, you could end up investing a couple of hours every day (or more) posting content on social media, as well as trying to manage your business, your content and your web presence.
Most small business owners lack the time, resources and budget to employ the services of a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are advising. If you spent half a day checking Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook in addition to researching and writing content for your blog or website, how could you get anything in your business done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small businesses spend their working hours. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
Research done in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent 6 or more hours each week on social media (the other half 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 conducted today, the figures would probably be higher.
- More than half of all 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 spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend more 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 areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, budget, and time and many different areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on various 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 StumbleUpon. These companies can make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without prior warning. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on someone else’s asset? With WordPress, you can control your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other online properties.
Investing in business automation to leverage time is not new. Businesses have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the availability of hundreds of new channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited budgets, resources, and time. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you focus more efforts, budget, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not control (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting your own website?
- 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 for automating the traffic generation with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more of your budget, efforts, and time on,
- Invest most of your efforts building your own asset and still benefit from other people’s marketing channels.
Many automated 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 urge you to avoid using black hat strategies, solutions, websites, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of sites like Google, YouTube, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t require using black hat methods!)
The purpose of this series of articles is to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing 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
We’ve just seen that many business owners lack the time, resources and financial means 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 limited resources, budget, and time.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels individually is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not use this time-saving approach 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 one-time, and automate the distribution of your content to all other services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social sites and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your site as shown in Part Two. Then, configure everything as explained in Part Three. After all this is in place, you can then automate the process with plugins such as the ones discussed below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some examples of traffic-generating WordPress plugins that can:
- Post content to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically to other sites via RSS
Jetpack by WordPress.com
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 plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many great features.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Distribute your posts automatically to several social networks.)
After all settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account options displays in the publishing area.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically get shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they will be automatically distributed online.)
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, go here: Jetpack by WordPress.com
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress commenting system lets your visitors engage with your website, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature with a third-party commenting plugin that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread them online.
For example, using a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they +1, tweet, or like your post. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they are typing their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which they can include with their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website.)
To learn more about the benefits of this great plugin, visit the plugin site:
Social LinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a WordPress plugin that lets you automatically syndicate content to many social websites, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed your content to many traffic-generating websites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to many social platforms, including:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Instapaper, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about the benefits of this plugin, visit this site: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get actionable information about your content distribution efforts), go here for a detailed article about social media measurement tools that are worth knowing about:
The above are just a few examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating 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: Automated Content Sharing Phase – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site and plugins set up and configured, all you need to do then is post new content regularly to start attracting web traffic organically.
If you need endless content ideas for your website, then subscribe to our FREE email training series on growing your business online with content marketing here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as you can. This step is addressed in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
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