Welcome to Part Four of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to automate traffic to your site using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part 1, we described the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is publish fresh content on a regular basis to automatically drive web traffic!)
In Part 2, we discuss the setup phase. We explain 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 site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In Part Three, we looked at the configuration phase of the blueprint.
Here, we configure all the settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you will configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part 4, we explain how to set up various WordPress plugins that can bring traffic automatically to your site when you begin to post new content consistently.
Why Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on which marketing expert you listen to, you could find yourself investing 1-2 hours every day (or more) promoting your business on social media.
Many small business owners lack the time, resources and budget to employ the services of a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are recommending. If you were to spend hours checking LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook in addition to researching and writing articles for your blog or website, how could you get anything in your business done?
(Keeping a business running is how most small businesses spend their working hours. Infographic source: NFIB)
Small business owners spend most of their working hours just 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.
Marketing research conducted by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent at least 6 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 survey was conducted today, the figures would probably be even 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 the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse.com)
As 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 equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budget, resources, and time and many different areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on a number of social websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. These companies can and will make decisions that affect your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building content on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can have complete control of your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other online properties.
Automating systems and process to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth channels for marketing and promoting a business creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited time, budget, and resources. For example:
- Which marketing channels should you focus more budget, time, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that allows you to automate the web traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing 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 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 that you stay away from all black hat sites, tools, techniques, and anything designed to “game” or violate the terms of service and policies of companies like Facebook, Google, Pinterest, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not require using black hat methods!)
The focus of this article series is to show you how to 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
We’ve just seen in the previous section how many business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts advise. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited time, budget, and resources.
So, instead of posting content to individual marketing channels, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to marketing channels one by one is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not opt for this time-saving method 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 services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social services 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 get all this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as explained in Part 2. Then, get it all configured as shown in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you then connect all of the dots with plugins like the ones shown below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a look now at some examples of plugins that can be used to:
- Syndicate content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically to other online properties via RSS
Jetpack by WordPress.com
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus 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 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 …
(Jetpack – Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Distribute your posts to various social media networks.)
After configuring all of the plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings displays in your Publish box.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they are automatically syndicated online.)
Go here to learn more about this powerful plugin: Jetpack WordPress Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting system lets your site users interact with your website, post comments, reply to other users and engage with your content.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature with a third-party 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 plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can create more user engagement on your website. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like social enticements for content-sharing, backlinks, adding twitter handles to comments, and ability to use keywords in the username. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they are typing their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can choose to include below their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website.)
Visit the plugin site to learn more about using this powerful plugin:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that lets you drip-feed your content to many authority platforms, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed your content automatically to over 30 online sites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to many social websites, such as:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Kippt, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Rebel Mouse, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
For more details about this powerful plugin, visit the plugin site: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get useful information about your content marketing efforts), we have written a detailed article about social media measurement tools and technologies that are worth checking out and knowing about. To learn more, go here:
The above are just a few 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 Blueprint: Automated Content Sharing Stage – Summary
Once your website or blog and plugins have been expertly configured and set up, all you then need to do is publish web content on a regular basis to automatically bring more web traffic organically.
We have created a complete email training series aimed at helping you come up with endless content for posting to your website or blog:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as can be improved. This step is addressed in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Section Four
To continue reading about this topic, click on the link below:
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
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