Welcome to Part Four of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following 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 automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is post content on a consistent basis to automatically begin attracting traffic!)
In Part Two, we look at the setup phase. We explain the best way to start 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 website was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In Part Three, we discussed the configuration phase of this system.
Here, we configure all the settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three we explain how to configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this step, we explain how to set up various plugins that can help get visitors automatically to your site simply by posting new content.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which business marketing gurus you listen to, you could find yourself trying to spend an hour each day (or more) promoting your business on social media while also managing your business, your content and your online presence.
Many business owners simply lack the time, resources and financial means to employ the services of a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts advise doing. If you spend hours posting updates on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter in addition to planning and writing content for your website or blog, how can anything else in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time just keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many business owners 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 grow in order to survive.
Marketing research done by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent at least 6 hours each week on social media (the rest 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 conducted today, the figures 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.
(Businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend more time marketing and promoting themselves online in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to focus their time on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budget, resources, and time and many areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on various social media sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or StumbleUpon. These sites often will make decisions that can significantly affect your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building content on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can control your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other sites.
Investing in business automation to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increasing availability of hundreds of new channels for promoting and marketing a business online creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited time, resources, and marketing budget. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels should you invest more of your budget, time, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, 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 The Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that allows you to automate your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this strategy, 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 costs,
- Determine which channels you should focus more budget, time, and your efforts 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 recommend avoiding black hat sites, software, techniques, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of services like Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not have to involve the use of black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this article series is not to manipulate web services or break their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites visited by your target audience.
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 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 resources, time, and budget.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to services one by one 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 once, and automate your content distribution to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media channels and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content to other blogs and online 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 WordPress website or blog as described in Part 2. Then, get everything configured as explained in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you can then automate the content distribution using 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 quick look at a few traffic-generation WordPress plugins that can be used to:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically via RSS to other blogs
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, 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 useful features.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts automatically on various social accounts.)
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 show in the post publishing section.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it is automatically distributed online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides you with a hands-free way to create more exposure online for your content on social media sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting system allows your blog readers to engage with your site, post comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions as part of an online community.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature using third-party plugins that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share your content online.
For example, using a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like using keywords in the name, social enticements for sharing your content, the ability to add twitter handles to comments, and search-indexable backlinks. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they enter their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can choose to include with their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv Pro version can help attract more comments and traffic and create more user engagement on your web site.)
Visit the plugin website to learn more about the benefits of using this great plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a plugin that allows you to automatically drip-feed your content to many social sites, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed content automatically to dozens of social platforms)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to dozens of social websites, such as:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Plurk, Zotero, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, go here: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get useful information about your content distribution campaigns), or to learn more about social media monitoring tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives, see this article:
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 Automation System: Automated Content Syndication Process – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site and plugins fully set up and configured, all you then have to do is add web content regularly to begin bringing more traffic organically.
We have created a complete email course aimed at helping you come up with limitless content ideas for posting to your web site:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is addressed in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Part 4
To read more, click here:
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