Welcome to Part Four of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part 1, we provided an overview of the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to begin attracting traffic is add great content regularly!)
In Part 2, we focus on critical setup decisions. We explain the best way to start 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 is built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In Part 3, we looked at the configuration phase of the automation system.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you will configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In this article, we look at ways to automate traffic generation using WordPress plugins.
Why You Should Automate Your Traffic Generation Process
Depending on who you listen to, you could find yourself investing an hour or two (or more) every day posting content on social media in addition to trying to manage your business, your content and your web presence.
Most businesses lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts prescribe. If you spent half a day checking Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn in addition to writing content for your website or blog, how would you get anything in your business done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. Image source: NFIB)
Small business owners spend most of their time just keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted 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 (most of the other 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 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 consumed the most time online.
(Small businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend more time promoting and marketing themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited time, marketing budgets, and resources and many areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on a number of 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 LinkedIn. These sites can and will make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without prior notification. Why invest so much time and effort building content on someone else’s real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other online properties.
Automating systems and process to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth channels for marketing and promoting a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited resources, time, and budget. For example:
- Which of these channels should you focus more efforts, budget, and your time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not control (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, 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 Your Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that lets you automate the web traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should invest more of your budget, efforts, and time on,
- Invest most of your time 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 websites, strategies, tools, and anything designed to “game” or violate the policies and terms of service of services like Facebook, Pinterest, Google, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not require the use of black hat methods!)
The focus of this article is not to manipulate online services or bypass their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and increase your exposure online to websites visited 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, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts advise. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of posting content to services individually, which can be very time-consuming …
(Posting content to marketing channels individually can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not use this time-saving strategy 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 services.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media channels 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as described in Part Two. Then, expertly configure your site settings as shown in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then connect all of the dots using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a number of traffic-generating WordPress plugins that can help:
- Syndicate content to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically to other blogs via RSS
Jetpack by WordPress.com
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn 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 3 …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your content automatically to several social media accounts.)
After all settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account options appear in the 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 new posts will be automatically distributed online.)
This is a hands-free way to create more exposure online for your content on social websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting system that allows your site users to interact with your website, post new comments, reply to other users and engage with your content as part of a community.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature using 3rd-party plugins that integrate 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 post. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they are entering their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can choose to include with their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your web site.)
To learn more about this plugin, go here:
Social Link Machine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a plugin for WordPress that lets you drip-feed your content to over 30 authority websites, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed content automatically to over 30 authority websites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to many traffic-generating websites, like:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Instapaper, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Rebel Mouse, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
To learn more about using this handy plugin, go here: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get actionable information about your content distribution campaigns), we have created a comprehensive article listing a number of social media measurement tools that are worth checking out and knowing about. To learn more, go here:
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 Automation System: Automated Content Syndication Phase – Summary
Once your website and plugins have been configured and fully set up, all you have to do then to automatically start generating traffic is publish content regularly.
We have created a complete email series designed to help you come up with endless content ideas for posting to your web site:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as you can. This step is explained in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
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