Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to create an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this 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 generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is post great content on a consistent basis to begin bringing more web traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase of the blueprint. We helped you understand the best way to start 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 existing website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we discussed the configuration phase of the blueprint.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section, we will discuss ways to automate the traffic-generation process with WordPress plugins.
Why You Should Consider Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which marketing experts you talk to, you could end up trying to spend an hour or more each day promoting your business on social media in addition to trying to run your business, creating content and managing your online presence.
Most small business owners 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 Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook in addition to researching and writing articles for your blog or website, how can anything in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their working hours simply keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses done by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent six or more hours per week on social media (most of the other businesses surveyed that used social media spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This use of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was done today, the figures would probably be even higher.
- More than half of all 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 increasingly larger amounts of time marketing and promoting themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited budget, time, and resources and many areas to focus on have 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 media 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 can significantly affect your business without prior warning. Why invest so much time and effort building content on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Automating systems and process to save time is not new. Businesses have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited time, resources, and marketing budgets. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels should you invest more of your efforts, budget, and your time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, 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 Generation Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy for automating the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, 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 invest 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 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 urge that you stay away from all black hat tools, websites, techniques, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of companies like Twitter, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not require the use of black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing here is not to game web services or break their terms of service, but to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and 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
We’ve just seen in the previous section that most small business owners 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 be strategic with your limited time, resources, and budget.
So, instead of posting content to marketing channels individually, which can be extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to different channels is very time-consuming!)
Why not use this strategy 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 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as explained in Part Two. Then, configure everything as described in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you can then automate the process using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some examples of plugins that can help to:
- Syndicate content to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically to other sites via RSS feeds
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus and more as soon as you publish your content using a plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with loads of useful functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, 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 Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Share your content automatically on several social networks.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings show in the publishing area.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they will be automatically syndicated online.)
To learn more about using this WordPress plugin, visit this website: Jetpack Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress commenting function allows your visitors to engage with your website or blog, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions as part of a community.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature with a 3rd-party plugin that integrates your comments with social media, helping to spread and share them online.
For example, a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your web site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like using keywords in the username, social enticements for content-sharing, adding twitter usernames to comments, and backlinks. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they are typing their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can include with their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can help attract more comments and visitors and create more user engagement on your website.)
Visit this site to learn more about this handy plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – Content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a WordPress plugin that lets you syndicate and drip-feed content, build backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate content automatically to dozens of traffic-generating sites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to many online platforms, like:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Folkd, Instapaper, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Overblog, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
Go here to learn more about this handy plugin: SocialLinkMachine
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 written a comprehensive article where we explore several social media measurement tools and technologies that will help you keep track of online trends, monitor competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that could affect your business, etc, see what online conversations are taking place that affect your business,etc. More info:
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 Automation System: Automated Content Sharing Process – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been configured and set up, all you have to do then to automatically drive more web traffic is post new content on a regular basis.
We have created a complete email course designed to help you come up with limitless content for posting to your web site:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is addressed in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Section Four
To keep reading, click here:
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