Welcome to Part Four of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part One, we explained 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 start attracting traffic is post content regularly!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase of the traffic automation system. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we focus on the configuration phase of this blueprint.
Here, we configure all the settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In this step, we look at ways to automate your traffic with different plugins.
Why Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which marketing guru you talk to, you could end up spending 1-2 hours per day (or more) posting content on social media while also managing your business, your content and your online presence.
Most business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to run a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts advise doing. If you spent hours posting updates on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing articles for your website or blog, how would you get anything in your business done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours simply keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: NFIB)
Small business owners spend most of their time trying to keep their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
Marketing research conducted in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent around 6 hours each week on social media (the rest 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 numbers would probably 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 consumed the most time online.
(Small businesses are spending more time marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time promoting and marketing themselves online in order to compete and survive, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited budget, resources, and time and many areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on various social websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These sites can make decisions that can significantly affect your business without prior notification. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other online properties.
Automating business processes to leverage time is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increased availability of many new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited marketing budget, resources, and time. 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 assets on sites that do not belong to you (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on 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 Web Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that allows you to automate the web traffic generation 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 costs,
- Determine which channels you should focus more of your efforts, budget, and your time 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 avoiding black hat websites, strategies, tools, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of sites like Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not require the use of black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this article is to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that many business owners lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited resources, time, and budget.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different services individually is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not use 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 one-time, and automate the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social channels and social 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress site as described in Part 2. Then, configure things as explained in Part 3. After all this is in place, you can then automate your content distribution using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at some examples of WordPress plugins that can help:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically to other sites via RSS
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+, 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 many useful features.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize feature)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts on several social media sites.)
After configuring all of the plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize options appear in the Publish area.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it will be automatically distributed online.)
Go here to learn more about this handy plugin: Jetpack WordPress Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting system that lets your site users interact with your website or blog, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content as part of an online community.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature using a third-party plugin that integrates with social media, helping to spread and share your content online.
For example, a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help attract more comments and improve user engagement on your web site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like SEO backlinks, social enticements for sharing your content, the ability to add twitter handles to comments, and using keywords in the username. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they enter their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which can be included with their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website or blog.)
For more details about using this handy plugin, visit the plugin site:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a plugin for WordPress that lets you syndicate and drip-feed content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate your content automatically to many authority websites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to dozens of social websites, including:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Diigo, Kippt, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Rebel Mouse, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, go here: 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 efforts), we have written a comprehensive article about social media monitoring tools and technologies that will help you keep track of online trends, monitor competitor activity, see what online conversations are taking place that could affect your business, etc, see what online conversations are taking place that can affect your business,etc. Go here to learn more:
The above are just a few examples of the many content distribution plugins that are available to WordPress users.
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 Distribution Process – Summary
Once your site and plugins have been configured and fully set up, all you then have to do is publish content consistently to bring more traffic organically.
We have created a complete email course designed to help you never run out of great content ideas for posting to your site:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as you can. This step is covered in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Four
To keep reading this article, 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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