Welcome to Part Four of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part 1, we describe the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to bring traffic is post great content on a regular basis!)
In Part Two, we focus on the setup phase of this blueprint. We explain 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 site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we focus on configuring WordPress.
In this step, we configure all the settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure all the settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part 4, we discuss ways to automate the traffic-getting process using various WordPress plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate The Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which marketing expert you talk to, you could end up trying to spend an hour or two every day (or more) promoting your business on social media while also managing your business, your content and your web presence.
Many businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to employ the services of a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise doing. If you were to spend most of your time posting updates on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook in addition to planning and writing content for your blog or website, how would anything in your business ever get done?
(Keeping a business up and running is how most small businesses spend their time. Infographic: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses done in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent at least six hours per week on social media (the other half of businesses surveyed using social media spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was conducted today, the figures would most likely be 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 every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend more 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 important areas …
(Businesses with limited time, budgets, and resources and many areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on various social media sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. These companies can and will make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building content on someone else’s asset? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other online accounts.
Investing in automation to save time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increased availability of many new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited resources, time, and marketing budget. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels do you focus more of your budget, efforts, 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, Pinterest, 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 Your Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that lets you automate your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this formula, 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 online marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more efforts, time, and budget 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 recommend staying away from all black hat strategies, solutions, sites, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of companies like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not require using black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this article is not to manipulate web services or flaunt 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 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 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 resources, budget, and time.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels individually can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not opt for 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 once, and automate the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media sites and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) to other blogs and online 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress website or blog as described in Part 2. Then, get it all configured as explained in Part Three. After all this is in place, you can then automate these processes with plugins like the ones discussed in the section below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic System – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a few traffic-generation plugins that can be used to:
- Post content to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content via RSS feeds to other web properties
Jetpack by WordPress.com
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, 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 useful features.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part Three …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Distribute your content automatically to various social accounts.)
After configuring all of the account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account options displayed in your post publishing box.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new posts will be automatically shared online.)
Jetpack provides an automated and hands-free way to get more exposure for your content online on social sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting feature that allows your site users to interact with your website, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature using a 3rd-party plugin that integrates your comments with social media, helping to spread and share them online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can create more user engagement on your site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like social enticements for sharing your content, using keywords in the user name, the ability to add twitter names to comments, and backlinks. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they are typing their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can choose to include below their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website or blog.)
To learn more about this plugin, go here:
Social LinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that allows you to drip-feed your content, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate content to dozens of authority websites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to many online platforms, like:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Instapaper, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
Go here to learn more about this plugin: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get useful information about your content marketing efforts), we have written a detailed article about social media monitoring tools that are worth knowing about. Go here to learn more:
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 Blueprint: Content Syndication Stage – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site and plugins fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then is post new content on a regular basis to automatically start generating more web traffic organically.
If you need endless content ideas for your site, we recommend subscribing to our email training course on content marketing here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as can be improved. This step is covered in the next article in our WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read more, click here:
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
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