Welcome to Part Four of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to drive new visitors automatically to your website using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part 1, we provided an overview of the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is post fresh content on a consistent basis to automatically drive more web traffic!)
In Part 2, we focus on the setup phase. We explain 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 site was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In Part Three, we looked at the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you will configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this article, we will show you how to set up various WordPress plugins that can get visitors automatically to your website.
Why Automate The Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on which marketing guru you talk to, you could find yourself investing an hour or two (or more) per day posting content on social media.
Many small business owners lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts advise. If you spend half your day checking Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing articles for your website or blog, how can anything else in your business get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. Image source: NFIB)
Many businesses spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent 6 or more hours each week on social media (the other half spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was conducted today, the figures 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.
(Small businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend more time promoting and marketing themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to prioritize their time on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budgets, time, and resources and many different areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on a number of social media websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. These sites can and will make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on someone else’s asset? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other websites.
Investing in business automation to leverage time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth channels for marketing and promoting a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited resources, time, and budgets. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels do you invest 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, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring your own website?
- 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 method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should focus more of your time, budget, and efforts on,
- Invest most of your time 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, software, methods, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of sites like YouTube, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t have to involve the use of black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this article is to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and 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 that many businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to individual channels 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 once, and automate the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content automatically 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 shown in Part Two. Then, get it all configured as explained in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you 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 Automation System – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at some WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Post content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically to other online properties via RSS
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, GooglePlus, 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 useful functions.
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 on Jetpack)
You can share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Distribute your content automatically to various social media sites.)
After all plugin and account settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings displays in the publishing area.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they will be automatically syndicated online.)
To learn more about this powerful plugin, visit this site: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting feature that allows your blog readers to interact with your website, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions as part of a community.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature using 3rd-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share your content online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they plus1, like, or tweet your content. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they enter their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which can be included at the bottom of their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website.)
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, visit this website:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a WordPress plugin that allows you to syndicate content, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed your content automatically to over 30 social websites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to over 30 authority sites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Folkd, Plurk, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
Go here to learn more about the benefits of this plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get useful information about your content distribution efforts), we have created a comprehensive article where we explore over 30 social media measurement tools that are worth knowing about. Go here for 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 System: Content Sharing Phase – Summary
Once you have your website or blog and plugins set up and configured, all you then have to do is publish web content on a regular basis to drive more web traffic organically.
If you need help coming up with great ideas for content that you can post on your website, then subscribe to our email training series on content marketing here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as can be improved. This step is addressed in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read more, click on the link below:
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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