Welcome to Part Four of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to create an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part One, we provided an overview of the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is add content regularly to generate more traffic!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase. We explained 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 website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we discuss important configuration decisions.
Here, we configure all the settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, we look at ways to automate traffic generation using a number of plugins.
Why Automate The Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which marketing expert you talk to, you could end up spending an hour or two per day (or more) posting content on social media.
Many business owners simply lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts advise doing. If you are spending hours posting updates on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook in addition to researching and writing content for your website or blog, how will you get anything else in your business done?
(Keeping their business up and running is how most small business owners spend their working hours. Infographic: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their working hours keeping 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 conducted by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent at least six hours each week on social media (the rest 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 survey was done today, the figures would most likely be even 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 are spending more time marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to prioritize their time on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budgets, resources, and time and many areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social media sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. These sites can make decisions that impact your business without prior notification. Why invest so much time and effort building content on someone else’s asset? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can control your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other sites.
Automating business systems and processes to leverage time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited budget, resources, and time. For example:
- Which channels should you invest more time, budget, and your efforts 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 the benefits of building content on your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that lets you automate the web traffic generation with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should invest more time, budget, and your 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 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 sites, techniques, solutions, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of companies like LinkedIn, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t need to involve using black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this series of articles is to show you how to be smart with your limited resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and get additional exposure online from 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 business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts advise. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to services individually can be 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 the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content automatically 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as described in Part Two. Then, expertly configure things as explained in Part Three. After all 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 Traffic System – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a look now at some traffic-generation plugins that can help:
- Distribute content to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically to other blogs via RSS
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, 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 useful features.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part Three …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts on 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 settings displays in the publishing area.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically be shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they are automatically syndicated online.)
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, go here: Jetpack Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting system that allows your site users to engage with your website, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature with a 3rd-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread your content online.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they tweet, +1, or like your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they type their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can include below their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your site.)
For more details about using this handy plugin, visit the plugin website:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a plugin that allows you to automatically drip-feed your content to over 30 authority sites, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed content to many authority platforms)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to over 30 traffic-generating platforms, like:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Linkagogo, Kippt, Zotero, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Rebel Mouse, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
For more details about the benefits of using this powerful plugin, go here: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get actionable information about your content distribution campaigns), we have written a comprehensive article on social media monitoring tools and technologies that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns. For more details:
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: Automated Content Sharing Process – Summary
Once your website or blog and plugins have been configured and set up, all you have to do then to automatically start attracting web traffic is publish fresh content on a regular basis.
If you need help coming up with unlimited great ideas for content that you can post on your web site, then subscribe to our FREE email training course on growing your business with content marketing here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is covered in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Automation System 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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