Welcome to Part 4 of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part One, we provided an overview of the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is post content consistently to automatically begin attracting web traffic!)
In Part Two, we discuss the setup phase. We help 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 website is built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we focused on the configuration phase of the traffic automation blueprint.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this step, we will look at ways to automate traffic to your website using a number of WordPress plugins.
Why Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on who you get your advice from, you could end up investing 1-2 hours every day (or more) promoting your business on social media.
Many small businesses simply lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts prescribe. If you spend hours posting updates on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook in addition to planning and writing articles for your blog or website, how does anything in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time just keeping their businesses up and running. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many businesses spend most of their time 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.
Research conducted by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent around 6 hours per week on social media (the other half 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 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 was the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image 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 prioritize their time on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited time, marketing budgets, and resources and many areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. These companies can make decisions that affect your business without prior notification. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other sites.
Automating business processes to save time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the availability of so many new channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited resources, time, and marketing budget. For example:
- Which channels do you invest more of your efforts, budget, and your time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that belong to other people (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, 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 The Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy for automating the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more of your time, budget, and your efforts 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 strategies, tools, websites, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the policies and terms of service of sites like Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not require the use of black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this series of articles is not to manipulate web services or flaunt their terms of service, but 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 that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, most businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited resources, budget, and time.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to services individually can be very 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:
- Automatically distribute content to social media channels 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your site as explained in Part Two. Then, get everything configured as shown in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then automate your content distribution with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at a few traffic-generating plugins that can help:
- Syndicate content to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Syndicate 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 Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+, LinkedIn and more as soon as you publish your 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 your WordPress.com account …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your content on various social accounts.)
After configuring all plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account options displays in your publishing area.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they will be automatically syndicated online.)
Jetpack provides a hands-free, automated way to get more exposure online for your content on social media websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting function that lets your blog readers interact with your website, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature with a third-party plugin that integrates with social media, helping to spread and share them around.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they tweet, +1, or like your content. 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 include at the bottom of their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can attract more comments and web traffic and improve user engagement on your website.)
Go here to learn more about the benefits of this handy plugin:
Social Link Machine
(Social LinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin that lets you drip-feed your content, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – drip-feed content automatically to over 30 online websites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to dozens of authority websites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Plurk, Reddit, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Rebel Mouse, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
Go here to learn more about the benefits of this handy plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get actionable information about your content distribution campaigns), we have created a comprehensive article where we explore a number of social media measurement tools and technologies that are worth knowing about. For more details, go here:
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 you have your website or blog and plugins set up and configured, all you have to do then to drive web traffic is publish content on a consistent basis.
We have created a complete email email-based training course designed to help you never run out of great content ideas for your site:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is explained in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read more, click on the link below:
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