Welcome to Part 4 of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a website into an automated web traffic generation machine using WordPress.
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 website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is publish web content regularly to automatically bring traffic!)
In Part 2, we discuss the setup phase of the traffic automation system. We help you understand the best way to get started 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 site was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In Part 3, we focus on important configuration decisions.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this step, we discuss ways to automate your traffic with plugins.
Why You Should Automate The Traffic Generation Process
Depending on who you listen to, you could end up spending an hour or two (or more) per day posting content on social media in addition to running your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Many small businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to employ the services of a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are recommending. If you spent half a day checking LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter in addition to planning and writing articles for your blog or website, how would anything else in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners 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 stay competitive and make sales in order to survive.
Marketing research done by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent 6 or more hours each week on social media (most of the other businesses surveyed that used social media spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This use of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was done today, the figures would most likely be even higher.
- More than half of all small businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more to create a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media was their most time-consuming online activity.
(Businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time promoting and marketing themselves online in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to focus their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, budgets, and time and many different areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on a number of social websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These sites often will make decisions that can significantly affect your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can control your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other sites.
Automating processes to leverage time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the availability of many new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited marketing budgets, time, and resources. For example:
- Which channels should you focus more of your budget, time, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that allows you to automate your 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 costs,
- Determine which channels you should invest more time, budget, and your efforts on,
- Invest most of your efforts building your own asset instead of someone else’s 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 recommend avoiding black hat methods, tools, sites, and anything designed to “game” or violate the policies and terms of service of services like Pinterest, Facebook, Google.
(Web traffic automation doesn’t require using black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this article series is to show you how to be smart with your limited resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and efforts, and increase your exposure online to websites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that many businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of posting content to each marketing channel, which can be very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels individually can be very time-consuming!)
Why not opt for a smarter, time-saving approach like this 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 once, and automate your content distribution to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social channels and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) automatically to other blogs and web 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 WordPress website as described in Part 2. Then, get it all configured as explained in Part Three. After all this is in place, you can then automate the content distribution with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some examples of WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Syndicate content to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content via RSS to other sites
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 useful functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part Three …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Distribute your content to various social accounts.)
After all account and plugin settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account options displayed in the Publish area.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically get shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your posts are automatically distributed online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides you with a hands-free, automated way to get more exposure for your content online on social websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress native commenting function allows your blog readers to engage with your web site, post new comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content as part of a community.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature with 3rd-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments with social media, helping to spread and share them around.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can improve user engagement on your website or blog. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like social enticements for sharing content, the ability to add twitter handles to comments, search-indexable backlinks, ability to use keywords in the user name. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they enter their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can include at the bottom of their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv Premium version can help attract more comments and web traffic and improve user engagement on your site.)
Go here to learn more about using this plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that allows you to automatically syndicate and drip-feed content, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed content to dozens of social websites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to many traffic-generating websites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Folkd, Kippt, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Sett, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
For more details about the benefits of this powerful plugin, visit this site: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get useful information about your content distribution efforts), we have written a detailed article about social media tracking tools and technologies that are worth knowing about here:
The above are just some examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating 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: Content Syndication Stage – Summary
Once you have your site and plugins set up and configured, all you then have to do to begin bringing new traffic is post web content on a consistent basis.
If you need great content ideas for your website or blog, then subscribe to our email training series on growing your business online with content marketing here:
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 covered in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Four
To keep reading this article, click here:
***
"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
***