Welcome to Part Four of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a site into an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part One, 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 site, all you have to do is publish web content consistently to attract new traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase. 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 website, and what to do if your existing website was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we focus on the configuration phase of the automation blueprint.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure all the settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section, we look at ways to automate your traffic with different plugins.
Why Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on which expert you listen to, you could find yourself trying to spend an hour or more each day posting content on social media.
Many small business owners lack the time, resources and budget to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts prescribe. If you spend hours posting updates on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter in addition to planning and writing content for your website or blog, how does anything else in your business get done?
(Keeping a business up and running is how most small business owners spend their time. Infographic: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half 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 research was conducted today, the figures would probably 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 their most time-consuming online activity.
(Businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse.com)
As 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 equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited budgets, time, and resources and many areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on various social sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These companies can make decisions that can significantly affect your business without prior notification. Why invest so much time and effort building content on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own real estate and post your content automatically to other websites.
Automating business processes 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 availability of hundreds of new channels for promoting and marketing a business creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited marketing budgets, resources, and time. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you invest more of your efforts, time, and budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not control (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Web Traffic Generation With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that lets you automate your traffic generation with WordPress.
With this formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more budget, time, and efforts on,
- Invest most of your time and 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 strongly urge you to avoid using black hat techniques, websites, solutions, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Google.
(Automating your web traffic does not require using black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this article series is not to manipulate web services or break their terms of service, but to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and increase your exposure online to sites used by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen in the previous section how many business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of posting content to individual marketing channels, which is extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels is extremely 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 your content distribution to all other services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media services and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress website as described in Part Two. Then, configure everything as shown in Part 3. After all this is in place, you then automate these processes with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at some plugins that can help to:
- Syndicate content to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically to other blogs via RSS feeds
Jetpack Plugin
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 WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many great features.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part Three …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack – Publicize)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Publicize your content to several social networks.)
After all account and plugin settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize options in your publishing section.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it is automatically distributed online.)
Jetpack provides you with a hands-free way to get more exposure for your content online on social media sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting function that lets your site users interact with your website, post new comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content as part of a community.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature using a third-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates your comments with social media, helping to spread and share your content around.
For example, a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they like, +1, or tweet your post. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they are entering their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included at the bottom of their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website or blog.)
Go here to learn more about this powerful plugin:
Social Link Machine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a plugin for WordPress that lets you automatically syndicate and drip-feed content, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed content automatically to many traffic-generating websites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to many authority sites, including:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Diigo, Plurk, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
For more details about using this WordPress plugin, visit this site: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get actionable information about your content marketing efforts), we have created a detailed article listing a number of social media tracking tools that are worth knowing about. For more details, go here:
The above are just some examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating and syndicating 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 Blueprint: Content Syndication Process – Summary
Once you have your website or blog and plugins set up and configured, all you need to do to begin attracting new traffic is post content regularly.
If you need endless content ideas for your website or blog, then subscribe to our FREE email training series on growing your business with content marketing here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as you can. This step is addressed in the next section of our WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Part 4
To read the rest of this article series, click here:
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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