Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to drive visitors automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part One of this article 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 web site, all you have to do to begin bringing web traffic is post new content on a regular basis!)
In Part Two, we focus on critical setup decisions. We explain the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website is built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we focus on the configuration phase of the traffic automation process.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 we show you how to configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, you will learn how to set up various WordPress plugins that can get new visitors automatically to your website or blog.
Why Automating The Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on which marketing experts you talk to, you could end up trying to spend an hour or more a day promoting your business on social media while also running your business, creating content and managing your online presence.
Many small business owners simply lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise doing. If you were to spend hours posting updates on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter in addition to planning and writing content for your website or blog, how would you get anything else in your business done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours just keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: NFIB)
Small business owners spend most of their working hours 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 grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent 6 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 research was conducted today, the numbers would most likely be significantly 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 each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend more time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and budget and many different 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 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 Pinterest. These companies can and will make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much effort and time building content on someone else’s asset? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can have complete control of your own real estate and post your content automatically to other online accounts.
Automating business processes to leverage time is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth channels for promoting and marketing a business online creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited resources, budget, and time. For example:
- Which channels do you focus more of your budget, time, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that belong to other businesses (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring 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 The Web Traffic Generation With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that lets you automate your 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 invest more of your efforts, budget, and your time on,
- Invest most of your time building your own asset instead of someone else’s 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 sites, software, methods, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of services like Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not have to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
The focus of this article is to show you how to be smart with your limited resources and automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and marketing efforts, and increase your exposure online to websites 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 that most small business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited time, resources, and budget.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to different services one at a time 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 one-time, and automate your content distribution to all other channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media channels and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) 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 site as shown in Part Two. Then, configure your site settings as described in Part Three. After all this is in place, you can then automate your content distribution with plugins like the ones listed below.
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 brief look at a number of traffic-generation plugins that can be used to:
- Syndicate content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content to other web properties via RSS
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus 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 installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part Three …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Share your posts automatically on several social sites.)
After configuring all plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings appear in your Publish section.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it is automatically syndicated online.)
Go here for more details about this great plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting system allows your visitors to engage with your website or blog, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content as part of an online community.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature using a 3rd-party plugin that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread your content around.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help attract more comments and improve user engagement on your website or blog. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like search-indexable backlinks, ability to use keywords in the username, adding twitter names to comments, and social enticements for content-sharing. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they are typing their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can include below their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv Pro version can attract more comments and web traffic and improve user engagement on your web site.)
Go here to learn more about using this handy plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social LinkMachine is a WordPress plugin that allows you to syndicate your content to over 30 social sites, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed your content automatically to dozens of social platforms)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to many social platforms, including:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Diigo, Instapaper, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Sett, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
Visit this site for more information about this great plugin: 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 detailed article about social media tracking tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives. For more details:
The above are just some examples of the many content distribution plugins that WordPress makes available.
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 Phase – Summary
Once your site and plugins have been set up and expertly configured, all you have to do is add web content on a regular basis to bring web traffic.
If you need great content ideas for your web site, then subscribe to our email training series on 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 article in our WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read the rest of this article, click here:
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