Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to turn your website into an automated web traffic machine using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part One of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to automatically start generating new web traffic is post content regularly!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase of the traffic automation blueprint. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In Part 3, we discuss the configuration phase of the automation system.
Here, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three we show you how to configure all the settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, we will look at ways to automate your traffic with WordPress plugins.
Why You Should Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which experts you listen to, you could find yourself trying to spend 1-2 hours per day (or more) posting content on social media in addition to managing your business, your content and your online presence.
Most small business owners lack the time, human 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 recommend. If you are spending most of your time posting updates on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter in addition to researching and writing content for your website or blog, how will you get anything else in your business done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many businesses spend most of their working hours just keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
Research done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent at least six hours each week on social media (the other half of businesses surveyed that used social media 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 done today, the numbers would probably be even 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. Infographic: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to prioritize their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and budget and many different business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on various social media websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These companies can make decisions that can significantly affect your business without consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can control your own real estate and post your content automatically to other websites.
Automating processes to save time 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 exponential growth online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited budgets, time, and resources. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels should you focus more efforts, budget, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that do not belong to you (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, 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 Your Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that lets you automate the traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more efforts, time, and budget on,
- Invest most of your time and efforts building your own asset 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 recommend staying away from all black hat sites, solutions, techniques, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of companies like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t need to involve using black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in 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 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 small businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts advise. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of posting content to different channels, which can be very time-consuming …
(Posting content to marketing channels one by one can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose a smarter, time-saving approach like the one shown below 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 once, and automate your content distribution to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social channels and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content to other blogs and online properties using RSS
- Import content automatically (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 website or blog as explained in Part Two. Then, get everything configured as described in Part 3. After all this is in place, you can then automate the process with plugins like the ones listed in the section below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a few WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Syndicate content to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically to other websites via RSS feeds
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+ and more as soon as you publish new 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 the WordPress.com account set up in Part Three …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your content to various social media sites.)
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 options in your Publish area.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new posts are automatically distributed online.)
To learn more about this great plugin, go here: Jetpack WordPress Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting system lets your visitors interact with your web site, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions as part of an online community.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature using a 3rd-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates with social media, helping to spread and share them online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they like, tweet, or plus1 your post. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they are entering their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can include with their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv can attract more comments and improve user engagement on your website.)
To learn more about using this WordPress plugin, go here:
Social LinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – Content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social Link Machine is a WordPress plugin that allows you to automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to over 30 traffic-generating sites, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate content automatically to many social websites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to over 30 social platforms, including:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Delicious, Folkd, Kippt, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
For more details about using this handy plugin, go here: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get useful information about your content marketing campaigns), we have created a comprehensive article where we explore several social media tracking tools that are worth checking out and knowing about. More information:
The above are just a few examples of the many content distribution plugins that are available to WordPress users.
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 Sharing Process – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins set up and expertly configured, all you then need to do to begin bringing new traffic is add web content consistently.
We have created a complete email course designed to help you never run out of great content for 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 section of our series.
This is the end of Section 4
To continue reading, click on the link below:
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"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie
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