Welcome to Part Four of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive visitors automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part One of this series, we provide an overview of the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to generate more web traffic is publish content regularly!)
In Part Two, we discuss the setup phase. We help you understand the best way to start 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 is built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we discussed the configuration phase.
Here, we configure all the settings that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part 4, we will discuss ways to automate traffic to your website using a number of WordPress plugins.
Why You Should Consider Automating The Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which expert you talk to, you could find yourself investing 1-2 hours or more per day posting content on social media.
Most small business owners lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are advising. If you spend half your day checking Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing content for your website or blog, how will you get anything else in your business done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small businesses spend their time. Source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
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 remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
Research conducted by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent around 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 research was conducted today, the figures would most likely 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 consumed the most time online.
(Businesses are spending more time 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 marketing budget, time, and resources and many business areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social media websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These companies can and will make decisions that can significantly impact your business without prior notification. Why invest so much effort and time 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 sites.
Automating business systems and processes to save time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the availability of so many new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited resources, time, and marketing budget. For example:
- Which marketing channels should you invest more time, efforts, and budget 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 ignoring your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that allows you to automate the 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 channels you should focus more of your 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 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 recommend avoiding black hat websites, tools, strategies, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the policies and terms of service of companies like Facebook, YouTube, Google, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not require using black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this series of articles is not to manipulate web services or break their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and efforts, and increase your exposure online to websites used by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen in the previous section that many businesses lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of posting content to each service, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different services one by one is 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 once, and automate the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social services and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content automatically 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 of this done?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as explained in Part Two. Then, get it all configured as described in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you can then automate the process using plugins such as 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 System – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a look now at some examples of traffic-generation plugins that can help:
- Distribute content to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically via RSS feeds to other sites
Jetpack by WordPress.com
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, GooglePlus, LinkedIn 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 many useful features.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part 3 …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your content on several social media sites.)
After all settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account options appear in the Publish area.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically be shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it is automatically distributed online.)
Visit this website to learn more about this handy plugin: Jetpack by WordPress.com
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting feature lets your blog readers engage with your site, post new comments, reply to other users and engage with your content.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature with a 3rd-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content around.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they plus1, like, or tweet your content. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they enter their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website.)
To learn more about this plugin, go here:
SocialLinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a plugin for WordPress that lets you syndicate and drip-feed content to many traffic-generating sites, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate and drip-feed your content to over 30 traffic-generating sites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to dozens of authority sites, such as:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Diigo, Plurk, Zotero, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
Visit the plugin site to learn more about this plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get useful information about your content distribution campaigns), we have written a detailed article where we explore a number of social media measurement tools and technologies that are worth checking out and knowing about. For more details, go here:
The above are just some 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 Blueprint: Automated Content Syndication Stage – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then is post new content regularly to attract new web traffic organically.
If you need endless content ideas for your website, then subscribe to our email training course on content marketing 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 article in the series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read the rest of this article, click here:
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