Welcome to Part 4 of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part 1, we described the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is publish content on a regular basis to begin attracting traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we focus on the configuration phase.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three we explain how to configure all the settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section of the article series, we explain how to set up various WordPress plugins that can help get new traffic automatically to your site.
Why Automate The Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on which business marketing gurus you get your advice from, you could find yourself trying to spend a couple of hours or more every day promoting your business on social media.
Most business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts advise. If you are spending most of your time posting updates on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter in addition to planning and writing content for your blog or website, how does anything else in your business get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. Source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their time 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 done in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent six 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 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 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. Source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time marketing and promoting themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budget, time, and resources and many different areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on various social media sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or StumbleUpon. These sites can make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other sites.
Investing in automation 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 channels for marketing and promoting a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited time, resources, and marketing budgets. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels should you focus more of your time, budget, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting 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 we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy for automating the web traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should invest more time, efforts, and your budget on,
- Invest most of your time 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 strongly urge that you stay away from all black hat sites, methods, software, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of sites like Pinterest, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not need to involve using black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this article series is not to game web services or flaunt their terms of service, but to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and marketing efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites frequented by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen in the previous section how most businesses lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited resources, budget, and time.
So, instead of posting content to marketing channels one at a time, which can be very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels individually 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 your content distribution to all other channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media services 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress website as shown in Part Two. Then, expertly configure everything as shown in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you can 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 Traffic Automation Blueprint – Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a few WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Syndicate content to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically via RSS feeds to other web properties
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus 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 loads of great functions.
After installing Jetpack, 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)
You can share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Publicize your content to various social sites.)
After configuring all plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account details show in the Publish area.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your post is automatically distributed online.)
Go here to learn more about the benefits of this plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress native commenting system allows your blog readers to engage with your web site, post comments, reply to other users and engage with your content as part of an online community.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature using a 3rd-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates with social media, helping to spread and share your content online.
For example, using a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they like, +1, or tweet your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they type their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which they can include with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv can attract more comments and traffic and create more user engagement on your site.)
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, go here:
Social LinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a WordPress plugin that allows you to syndicate and drip-feed your content, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed your content automatically to dozens of traffic-generating sites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to dozens of online websites, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Delicious, Diigo, Plurk, Zotero, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about using this WordPress plugin, visit this site: 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), or if you want to learn more about social media measurement tools and technologies that are worth checking out and knowing about, see this article:
The above are just some 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 System: Automated Content Sharing Phase – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins configured and fully set up, all you have to do is add fresh content on a regular basis to drive traffic organically.
If you need endless topics for posting content on your website or blog, then subscribe to our email training series here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is addressed in the next article in the WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
***
"I was absolutely amazed at the scope and breadth of these tutorials! The most in-depth training I have ever received on any subject!" - Myke O'Neill, DailyGreenPost.com
***