Welcome to Part Four of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part One, 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 blog, all you have to do is publish new content consistently to attract more traffic!)
In Part 2, we focused on critical setup decisions. We explained 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 website was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we looked at configuring WordPress.
Here, we configure all the settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you will configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, we will look at ways to automate traffic to your website using various WordPress plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate The Traffic Generation
Depending on who you get your advice from, you could find yourself investing an hour each day (or more) promoting your business on social media in addition to trying to manage your business, your content and your online presence.
Most businesses simply lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are advising. If you were to spend most of your time posting updates on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook in addition to researching and writing content for your blog or website, how would you get anything else in your business done?
(Small businesses spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. Image source: NFIB)
Many businesses spend most of their working hours trying to keep their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s 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:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent six or more hours each week on social media (the other half 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 done today, the figures would probably be higher.
- More than half of all small 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.
(Small businesses are spending more time marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budget, time, and resources and many different business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on a number of social websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or StumbleUpon. These companies can and will make decisions that impact your business without prior notification. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can control your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other online accounts.
Automating processes to save time is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increasing availability of hundreds of new channels for promoting and marketing a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited time, marketing budgets, and resources. For example:
- Which channels do you invest more of your time, efforts, and budget 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 neglecting your own domain?
- 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 the traffic generation with WordPress.
With this strategy, 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 channels you should focus more time, efforts, and budget on,
- Invest most of your 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 recommend avoiding black hat methods, websites, solutions, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the terms of service and policies of sites like Google, Facebook, YouTube, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t need to involve using black hat methods!)
The purpose of this article is not to game web services or flaunt their terms of service, but to show you how to be smart with your limited resources and automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites visited by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen in the previous section that many small businesses lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of posting content to each different service, which can be very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different channels can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not do this 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 your content distribution to all other channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social services and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) automatically 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress website as described in Part Two. Then, configure everything as described in Part 3. After all this is in place, you can then automate your content distribution with plugins like the ones discussed below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at a number of WordPress plugins that can be used to:
- Syndicate content to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically to other web properties via RSS feeds
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ 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 installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (as described in Part 3.) …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected 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 Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Distribute your posts automatically to various social media sites.)
After configuring all plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details appear in your post publishing section.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically get shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your content is automatically distributed online.)
To learn more about this powerful plugin, visit the plugin site: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting feature that allows your blog readers to interact with your website or blog, post comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions as part of a social community.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature with a number of third-party plugins that integrate with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they +1, like, or tweet your content. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included at the bottom of their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv can attract more comments and create more user engagement on your website.)
Go here to learn more about using this powerful plugin:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that allows you to drip-feed content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed content automatically to dozens of traffic-generating sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to dozens of online websites, including:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Folkd, Plurk, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blogger, Overblog, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
For more details about the benefits of using this plugin, visit the plugin website: SocialLinkMachine
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 comprehensive article where we explore a number of social media monitoring tools that are worth knowing about. More info:
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 Distribution Phase – Summary
Once you have your website or blog and plugins fully set up and configured, all you have to do then is post content on a regular basis to automatically start generating new traffic.
We have created a complete email course aimed at helping you never run out of content ideas for your website or blog:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is explained in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Four
To continue reading this article, click on the link below:
- Website Traffic Blueprint Part Five – Discover How To Create An Automated Traffic Generation Machine
***
"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)
***