Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to turn your website into an automated web traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part One, we described the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is add great content on a consistent basis to start generating more traffic!)
In Part 2, we discuss critical setup decisions. We explain the best way to get started 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 website was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we focus on the configuration phase of the blueprint.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three we show you how to configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, you will learn how to set up various plugins that can bring visitors automatically to your site.
Why Automate The Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which marketing guru you listen to, you could end up trying to spend an hour or more each day posting content on social media in addition to managing your business, your content and your web presence.
Most small businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to run a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise doing. If you are spending most of your time checking LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter in addition to writing content for your blog or website, how will you get anything else in your business done?
(Small businesses spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. Source: NFIB)
Small businesses spend most of their time 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.
Research conducted in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent 6 or more hours each 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 was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was done today, the numbers 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 was the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Small businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend more time promoting and marketing themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to prioritize their time on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and budgets and many different business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. These companies can make decisions that affect your business without consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building content on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other sites.
Automating business systems and processes to leverage time is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital 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 resources, budget, and time. For example:
- Which channels do you focus more budget, efforts, and your time 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 ignoring the benefits of building content on your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that allows you to automate your traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should focus more of your budget, efforts, and time 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 urge that you stay away from all black hat techniques, software, sites, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the terms of service and policies of companies like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t require the use of black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this article is not to game online services or break their terms of service, but 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 get additional exposure online from websites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, most business owners lack the time, human 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.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels can be very 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 the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social channels and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content 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 website or blog as described in Part Two. Then, get everything configured as explained in Part 3. After all this is in place, you then connect all of the dots with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a few plugins that can help to:
- Syndicate content to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content to other blogs via RSS feeds
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and more as soon as you publish new content using a WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with loads of useful functions.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part 3 …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack – Publicize feature)
Configure this section to share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Share your content on several social media networks.)
After configuring all plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details displayed in the post publishing box.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically get shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your post will be automatically shared online.)
Go here to learn more about this great plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress native commenting feature lets your blog readers interact with your web site, post comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions as part of an online community.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature using a 3rd-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them online.
For example, a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they plus1, like, or tweet your content. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included below 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.)
Go here to learn more about the benefits of using this great plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that lets you drip-feed your content, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed your content automatically to over 30 online sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to many online websites, including:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Diigo, Instapaper, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
Go here to learn more about this handy plugin: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get actionable information about your content marketing efforts), go here to learn about social media monitoring tools and technologies that you may want to check out:
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 Blueprint: Automated Content Distribution Phase – Summary
Once your site and plugins have been configured and fully set up, all you need to do then to start generating more traffic is publish fresh content regularly.
If you need great content ideas for your site, then subscribe to our FREE email training course on content marketing here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is covered in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Four
To keep reading about this topic, click here:
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