Welcome to Part Four of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new visitors automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part 1 of this series, we provided an overview of the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to automatically drive web traffic is post web content consistently!)
In Part Two, we focus on the setup phase of this process. We explain the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In Part Three, we looked at configuring the system.
In this step, we configure all the settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 you will configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, we will discuss ways to automate your traffic using plugins.
Why Automate Your Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on which marketing gurus you get your advice from, you could find yourself trying to spend an hour or more every day promoting your business on social media.
Most small business owners simply lack the time, 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 prescribe. If you spend most of your time checking Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter in addition to writing content for your website or blog, how will you get anything else in your business done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Source: NFIB)
Small business owners spend most of their working hours simply keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow 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 small businesses surveyed spent around 6 hours per week on social media (the other half spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This usage of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was conducted today, the numbers 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.
(Small businesses are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend more time marketing and promoting themselves online 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 areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social websites, 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 make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can control your own real estate and post your content automatically to other websites.
Investing in automation to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses 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 business managers, especially for those with limited budgets, time, and resources. For example:
- Which channels do you focus more of your budget, time, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not own (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring the benefits of building content on your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method 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 or blog and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more of your budget, efforts, 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 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 methods, websites, tools, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of sites like LinkedIn, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not need to involve using black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this series of articles is to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and marketing efforts, and increase your exposure online to websites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that most business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts advise. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different services individually 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 once, and automate the distribution of your content to all other services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media services and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as shown in Part Two. Then, expertly configure it as shown in Part 3. After all this is in place, you can then automate these processes using plugins like the ones listed in the following section.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a few plugins that can be used to:
- Distribute content to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically to other blogs via RSS
Jetpack by WordPress.com
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+ and more as soon as you publish your content using a WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with loads of great functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (which you would have set up in Part 3.) …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
You can share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your posts automatically to various social sites.)
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 details displays in the post publishing box.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your content will be automatically shared online.)
Go here to learn more about the benefits of using this handy plugin: Jetpack Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting function allows your blog readers to interact with your web site, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature with third-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content around.
For example, using 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 search-indexable backlinks, social enticements for sharing your content, ability to use keywords in the username, and the ability to add twitter usernames to comments. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they enter their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can include at the bottom of their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website.)
For more details about this handy plugin, go here:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a plugin for WordPress that lets you automatically drip-feed content to over 30 traffic-generating websites, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed your content to dozens of online platforms)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to many online sites, including:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Linkagogo, Kippt, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Overblog, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about using this WordPress plugin, visit the plugin site: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get useful information about your content distribution campaigns), we have written a comprehensive article on social media measurement tools that will help you keep track of online trends, monitor competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that could affect your business, etc, see what conversations are taking place online that affect your business,etc. Go here to learn more about this:
The above are just a few examples of the many content distribution plugins that WordPress makes available.
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: Automated Content Distribution Phase – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been configured and set up, all you need to do then to automatically begin bringing more traffic is post content on a consistent basis.
If you need endless content ideas for your site, we recommend subscribing to our FREE email training series here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is addressed in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Section Four
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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