Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive visitors automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part 1 of this article series, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to begin attracting new web traffic is add new content on a regular basis!)
In Part 2, we discuss the setup phase of the blueprint. We explain the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we discuss the configuration phase.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three we show you how to configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, you will learn how to set up various WordPress plugins that can drive new traffic automatically to your website.
Why Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on who you listen to, you could find yourself investing an hour or more a day promoting your business on social media.
Most businesses simply lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts recommend doing. If you spend all of your time posting updates on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn in addition to writing content for your blog or website, how does anything else in your business get done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small business owners spend their working hours. Infographic: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many businesses spend most of their time trying to keep their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent around 6 hours per 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 survey was done today, the numbers would most likely 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.
(Businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend more time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other equally important areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, marketing budgets, and time 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 social 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 companies often will make decisions that can significantly impact your business without prior notification. Why invest so much effort and time building content on someone else’s real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can control your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other websites.
Automating systems and process to save time is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increased availability of many new channels for marketing and promoting a business creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited time, marketing budget, and resources. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels do you invest more of your 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. Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, 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 The Traffic Generation With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula for automating the traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should focus more of your budget, time, and your efforts on,
- Invest most of your 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 urge that you stay away from all black hat techniques, tools, websites, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the terms of service and policies of sites like Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t have to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this article series is not to manipulate online services or break their terms of service, but to show you how to be smart with your limited resources and automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and marketing efforts, and increase your exposure online to sites frequented by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, many small businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most 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 individual channels is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose this approach 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 the distribution of your content to all other services.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social services and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) automatically 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 site as described in Part Two. Then, configure it as described in Part 3. After all this is in place, you can then connect all of the dots using plugins like the ones shown in the section below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a number of traffic-generation plugins that can help:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically via RSS feeds to other web properties
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, GooglePlus 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 loads of useful functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part Three …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Publicize your content to several social media networks.)
After all plugin and account settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings show in the Publish 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 distributed online.)
This is a hands-free, automated way to create more exposure online for your content on social networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress native commenting feature allows your blog readers to engage with your website or blog, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content as part of a community.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature using a third-party plugin that integrates your comments with social media, helping to spread and share them around.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your web site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like adding twitter usernames to comments, ability to use keywords in the username, backlinks, and social enticements for sharing your content. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author 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 Pro version can help attract more comments and improve user engagement on your web site.)
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, go here:
Social LinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – Content distribution plugin for WordPress)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that allows you to drip-feed your content to many authority sites, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – drip-feed content automatically to over 30 online sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to dozens of online sites, including:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Linkagogo, Instapaper, Zotero, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Sett, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
Go here to learn more about this great plugin: Social LinkMachine
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 monitoring tools that are worth checking out and knowing about. Go here to learn more about this:
The above are just some examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating and sharing 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 System: Automated Content Distribution Process – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then is publish web content on a consistent basis to automatically begin attracting more web traffic organically.
We have created a complete email course designed to help you come up with unlimited content for your website or blog:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as can be improved. This step is covered in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read more, click on the link below:
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