Welcome to Part 4 of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part 1, we provided an overview of the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is post content on a consistent basis to automatically begin attracting new web traffic!)
In Part Two, we focused on critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part 3, we focus on important configuration decisions.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three we show you how to configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section, we will discuss ways to automate the traffic-getting process using various WordPress plugins.
Why Automating Your Traffic Generation Makes Sense
Depending on who you listen to, you could find yourself trying to spend an hour or two per day (or more) promoting your business on social media while also trying to run your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Most business owners simply lack the time, human resources and budget to employ the services of a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are recommending. If you spend all of your time posting updates on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn in addition to planning and writing articles for your website or blog, how can anything else in your business get done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small businesses spend their time. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their working hours keeping 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.
A study of small businesses conducted in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent 6 or more 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 usage of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research 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 to create a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media was the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Small businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time marketing and promoting themselves online in order to compete and survive, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, marketing budget, and time and many business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other 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 don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These companies can and will make decisions that can significantly impact your business without prior notification. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on someone else’s real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other online properties.
Automating processes to save time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited time, budget, and resources. For example:
- Which channels do you focus more efforts, budget, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not own (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, 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 Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’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 formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more of your budget, efforts, and time on,
- Invest most of your time and efforts 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 urge you to avoid using black hat tools, techniques, sites, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the policies and terms of service of services like Twitter, Facebook, Google.
(Automating your web traffic does not need to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this article is not to game web services or break their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and increase your exposure online to sites frequented by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, many small business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited budget, time, and resources.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to marketing channels individually can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not use a smarter, time-saving approach 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 the distribution of your content to all other services.
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
- 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 this done?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress site as described in Part Two. Then, configure everything as explained in Part 3. 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 Traffic Automation System – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at some examples of traffic-generating WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Syndicate content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically via RSS to other websites
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, 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 functions.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part 3 …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Publicize your posts automatically to several social media 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 details in the Publish area.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically get shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it is automatically syndicated online.)
Go here to learn more about this handy plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting system allows your site users to interact with your web site, post comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions as part of a social community.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature with a number of third-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content around.
For example, a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they tweet, plus1, or like your post. This plugin will visit the website or blog 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 after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website.)
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, go here:
Social LinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a WordPress plugin that allows you to automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to over 30 online sites, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate and drip-feed your content to many online websites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to dozens of online sites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Delicious, Diigo, Plurk, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Sett, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
Go here to learn more about this plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get useful information about your content distribution campaigns), we have written a comprehensive article on social media monitoring tools that will help you identify new trends and opportunities, track competitor activity, see what online conversations are taking place that could affect your business,etc. For more details:
The above are just some examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating and sharing 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 Sharing Stage – Summary
Once you have your website or blog and plugins expertly configured and fully set up, all you then need to do is add fresh content on a consistent basis to automatically begin bringing web traffic organically.
We have created a complete email series aimed at helping you come up with endless content ideas for posting to your website or blog:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is addressed in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part 4
To continue reading this article, click on the link below:
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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