Welcome to Part Four of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a site into an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part 1 of this series, 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 website or blog, all you have to do to start attracting traffic is add great content consistently!)
In Part 2, we discussed 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 site, and what to do if your existing site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part Three, we discuss configuring WordPress.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three we explain how to configure all the settings that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this section of the article series, you will learn how to set up various WordPress plugins that can help get visitors automatically to your website or blog when you begin posting new content.
Why Automate The Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on who you listen to, you could find yourself spending 1-2 hours every day (or more) promoting your business on social media in addition to running your business, creating content and managing your online presence.
Many business owners lack the time, resources and budget to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts prescribe. If you were to spend half a day checking Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in addition to writing articles for your website or blog, how would you get anything in your business done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Source: NFIB)
Many businesses spend most of their working hours trying to keep their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and make sales in order to survive.
A study of small businesses done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent at least six hours per week on social media (the rest 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 done today, the figures would probably be 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 their most time-consuming online activity.
(Businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and marketing budget and many different business 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 social media sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These sites often will make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can control your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other sites.
Automating systems and process to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes 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 and marketing managers, especially for those with limited budget, resources, and time. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you invest more of your time, budget, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not own (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, 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 formula for automating 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 web marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more of your budget, time, and your efforts on,
- Invest most of your 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 urge you to avoid using black hat methods, websites, solutions, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t require the use of black hat methods!)
The purpose of this article is to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and increase your exposure online to websites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that most businesses lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited time, resources, and budget.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different services 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 one-time, and automate your content distribution to all other channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social services and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) 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 WordPress website or blog as shown in Part 2. Then, get everything configured as shown in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then connect all of the dots using plugins like the ones shown in the next section.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a look now at some traffic-generation plugins that can be used to:
- Syndicate content to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content to other web properties via RSS
Jetpack by WordPress.com
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, 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 useful functions.
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 …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Configure this section to share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your content to various social networks.)
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 account options in your publishing section.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically get shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it is automatically shared online.)
This is an automated and hands-free way to create more exposure online for your content on social media websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress commenting feature allows your site users to interact with your web site, post new comments, reply to other users and engage with your content.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature using a 3rd-party commenting plugin that integrates your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content around.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your website or blog. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like backlinks, ability to use keywords in the name, social enticements for sharing your content, and the ability to add twitter usernames to comments. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they enter their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included below their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can help attract more comments and web traffic and create more user engagement on your site.)
Go here for more details about using this handy plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that lets you drip-feed your content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate and drip-feed content automatically to many social websites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to dozens of traffic-generating sites, including:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Folkd, Plurk, Zotero, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
Visit this site to learn more about the benefits of using this handy plugin: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get actionable information about your content distribution campaigns), we have created a detailed article where we explore a number of social media tracking tools that will help you identify new business opportunities, track competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that could affect your business,etc. For more information, 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 System: Automated Content Distribution Phase – Summary
Once you have your site and plugins expertly configured and set up, all you have to do is add fresh content on a regular basis to automatically begin attracting more traffic.
If you need endless content ideas for your website or blog, we recommend subscribing to our email training series here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is covered in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read more, 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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