Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a site into an automated traffic machine using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part One of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is publish fresh content on a regular basis to automatically bring more traffic!)
In Part Two, we focused on critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part 3, we discuss important configuration decisions.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three we show you how to configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part 4, we look at ways to automate the traffic system using a number of WordPress plugins.
Why Automating Your Traffic Generation Makes Sense
Depending on which marketing expert you listen to, you could find yourself investing an hour or more each day promoting your business on social media.
Many small business owners 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 marketing experts recommend doing. If you spend half your day checking LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter in addition to planning and writing content for your website or blog, how can anything else in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. Image source: NFIB)
Many business owners spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
A study of small businesses done in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent six or more hours each 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 numbers would most likely be significantly 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: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend more time marketing and promoting themselves online in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to prioritize their time on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, marketing budgets, and time and many business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on a number of social media sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or StumbleUpon. These companies can and will make decisions that impact your business without consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building content on someone else’s real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other websites.
Investing in business automation to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the availability of many new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited time, marketing budgets, and resources. For example:
- Which channels should you invest more budget, efforts, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you ultimately have little to no control over (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Web Traffic Generation With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that allows you to automate the traffic-getting 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 online marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should focus more of your time, efforts, and budget on,
- Invest most of your time and 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 recommend avoiding black hat solutions, sites, techniques, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of sites like Google, Facebook, YouTube, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not have to involve the use of black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this article series is not to manipulate online services or flaunt their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites visited 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 most small businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of choosing this approach …
(Posting content to different channels can be 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 one-time, and automate the distribution of your content to all other services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media services and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as explained in Part Two. Then, configure it as described in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then automate various processes with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic System – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some examples of traffic-generating plugins that can help to:
- Syndicate content to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content via RSS feeds to other online properties
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, GooglePlus, LinkedIn and more as soon as you publish new content using a WordPress 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 …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Share your posts automatically on various social networks.)
After configuring all of the plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details appear in your post publishing box.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically get shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they will be automatically syndicated online.)
Jetpack provides you with a hands-free, automated way to get more exposure online for your content on social networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting system allows your visitors to engage with your web site, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature using 3rd-party plugins that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share your content online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they tweet, like, or +1 your post. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv Premium version can attract more comments and create more user engagement on your web site.)
To learn more about this plugin, visit this site:
Social Link Machine
(Social LinkMachine – Content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin that allows you to syndicate your content to dozens of online sites, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed content automatically to many online websites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to dozens of authority sites, including:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Plurk, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about using this great 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 marketing campaigns), we have written a comprehensive article on social media tracking tools and technologies that are worth knowing about here:
The above are just a few 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: Automated Content Sharing Process – Summary
Once you have your site and plugins configured and set up, all you then need to do is post content on a consistent basis to bring more web traffic.
If you need great content ideas for your website or blog, we recommend subscribing to our email training course on growing your business online with content marketing here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is covered in the next section of the WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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