Welcome to Part Four of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to create an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part 1, we describe the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to automatically attract traffic is post web content on a regular basis!)
In Part Two, we looked at critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to get started 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 site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we look at the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this section of the series, we will discuss ways to automate the traffic system using WordPress plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic Generation
Depending on who you talk to, you could find yourself investing 1-2 hours or more every day promoting your business on social media while also trying to run your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Most businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise. If you spent hours checking Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook in addition to researching and writing articles for your blog or website, how would anything in your business ever get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time just keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: NFIB)
Many business owners spend most of their working hours trying to keep 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.
A study of small businesses done by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent around six hours each week on social media (the rest 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 research was conducted today, the figures would most likely be even 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 their most time-consuming online activity.
(Businesses are spending more time marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend more time promoting and marketing themselves online in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to focus their time on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budgets, resources, and time and many areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing 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 YouTube. These companies can and will make decisions that can significantly affect your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much effort and time building content on someone else’s real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other online accounts.
Automating business processes to leverage time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited budget, time, and resources. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels should you invest more of your budget, time, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not control (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that allows you to automate your web traffic generation with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more of your efforts, time, and your budget on,
- Invest most of your efforts building your own asset instead of someone else’s 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 you to avoid using black hat websites, strategies, tools, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the policies and terms of service of services like Google, Facebook, Pinterest, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not need to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
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 so you can 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
We’ve just seen in the previous section that most businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts advise. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, time, and resources.
So, instead of posting content to different channels, which is extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to different channels is very time-consuming!)
Why not use this approach 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 once, and automate the distribution of your content to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media services and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) automatically to other blogs and web 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 described in Part Two. Then, get it configured as shown in Part 3. Once all of 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 Web Traffic Blueprint – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a look now at some examples of traffic-generating WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Post content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content via RSS to other sites
Jetpack by WordPress.com
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn and more as soon as you publish new content using a 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 …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your posts to various social networks.)
After all of the settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize options appear in the Publish box.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically be shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it is automatically shared online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides an automated and hands-free way to get more exposure online for your content on social media websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting function lets your site users engage with your website, post new comments, reply to other users and engage with your content as part of an online community.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature using third-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share them online.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can create more user engagement on your website or blog. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like SEO backlinks, social enticements for sharing content, the ability to add twitter names to comments, and ability to use keywords in the user name. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they are entering their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which can be included with their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your site.)
Visit the plugin site to learn more about this plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a plugin that lets you automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate and drip-feed your content automatically to over 30 online sites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to many social websites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Kippt, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, visit the plugin website: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get actionable information about your content marketing efforts), we have created a detailed article where we explore several social media monitoring tools that you may want to check out. More information:
The above are just a few 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: Content Distribution Process – Summary
Once your website or blog and plugins have been configured and fully set up, all you then need to do is publish new content on a regular basis to drive more traffic.
We have created an entire email training series designed to help you come up with endless content ideas for your site:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is explained in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read more, click here:
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"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie
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