Welcome to Part Four of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive traffic automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part 1, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is post fresh content on a consistent basis to automatically start driving web traffic!)
In Part 2, we focused on critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing website was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In Part 3, we discussed configuring the system.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, we will show you how to set up various plugins that can help drive web traffic automatically to your website simply by adding web content on a consistent basis.
Why Automate The Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which marketing experts you get your advice from, you could find yourself spending an hour each day (or more) posting content on social media while also managing your business, your content and your web presence.
Many business owners simply lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts recommend doing. If you spend hours checking Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter in addition to planning and writing content for your blog or website, how can anything in your business get done?
(Keeping a business running is how most small businesses spend their working hours. Source: NFIB)
Many business owners spend most of their working hours simply 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 around six hours per week on social media (the other half of businesses surveyed that used 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 research was done today, the numbers would most likely be higher.
- More than half of all 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 every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to focus their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited budget, resources, and time and many business areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on a number of social sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. These sites often will make decisions that can significantly affect your business without consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on someone else’s asset? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other online properties.
Investing in business automation to save time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth channels for promoting and marketing a business creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited resources, time, and marketing budgets. For example:
- Which channels should you focus more efforts, budget, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, 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 Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that allows you to automate your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should focus more efforts, budget, and your 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 avoiding black hat methods, websites, solutions, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of services like Facebook, Pinterest, Google, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not require using black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this article series is not to game online services or bypass 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 websites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen in the previous section that many 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 work smart within your limited time, resources, and budget.
So, instead of using this approach …
(Posting content to services individually can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not use a smarter, time-saving strategy like the one shown below 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 marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media services and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress website or blog as explained in Part Two. Then, get it configured as explained in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you can then connect all of the dots using plugins such as the ones listed in the following section.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a few WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Syndicate content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically via RSS feeds to other websites
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
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 WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with loads of great features.
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)
You can share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your content automatically on several social media networks.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize options in the Publish area.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they are automatically syndicated online.)
Jetpack provides you with a hands-free, automated way to get more exposure for your content online on social media networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress commenting function allows your blog readers to interact with your website, post new comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature with a third-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread your content online.
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 adding twitter usernames to comments, social enticements for sharing content, using keywords in the name, and SEO backlinks. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they enter their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can choose to include with their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website or blog.)
To learn more about this plugin, go here:
Social LinkMachine
(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 diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – drip-feed your content automatically to dozens of online platforms)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to dozens of authority platforms, including:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Diigo, Plurk, Zotero, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Rebel Mouse, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
Go here to learn more about this great plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get useful information about your content distribution efforts), we have created a detailed article listing several social media tracking tools and technologies that will help you identify new business opportunities, track competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that affect your business,etc. To learn more, go 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 Blueprint: Automated Content Distribution Stage – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins expertly configured and set up, all you then have to do to automatically drive traffic is publish web content regularly.
We have created an entire email training series designed to help you never run out of great content ideas for 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 section of our WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Part Four
To keep reading about this topic, click on the link below:
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