Welcome to Part 4 of our WordPress Web Site 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 1, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is post web content on a regular basis to start driving web 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 everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing site was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In Part Three, we looked at important configuration decisions.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this section, we discuss ways to automate traffic generation using a number of plugins.
Why Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which marketing experts you get your advice from, you could find yourself spending 1-2 hours or more every day promoting your business on social media, as well as running your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Many small businesses simply lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts recommend doing. If you spent hours checking Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn in addition to writing content for your website or blog, how could you get anything in your business done?
(Keeping a business running is how most small businesses spend their working hours. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
Research done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent 6 or more hours per 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 survey was conducted today, the figures would most likely be higher.
- More than half of all small 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.
(Businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend more time marketing and promoting themselves online in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to prioritize their time on other equally important areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, budget, and time and many 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 social media websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or StumbleUpon. These companies can and will make decisions that can significantly impact your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much effort and time building content on someone else’s real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can control your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other online properties.
Automating processes to leverage time is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increased availability of so many new channels for promoting and marketing a business creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited budget, resources, and time. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels should you invest more budget, time, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that do not belong to you (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring 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 Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula for automating the traffic-getting 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 web marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more time, budget, and your 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 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 solutions, methods, websites, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of companies like Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not have to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this article series 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 websites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen in the previous section that most businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts advise. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, time, and resources.
So, instead of posting content to marketing channels one by one, which can be very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different channels can be very 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 the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media channels 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 site as shown in Part 2. Then, get it all configured as described in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then connect all of the dots using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic System – Plugins
Let’s take a look now at some examples of plugins that can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically to other sites via RSS feeds
Jetpack by WordPress.com
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and more as soon as you publish new content using a plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with loads of great functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part Three …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Share your posts on various social media networks.)
After configuring all of the account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account details appear in your Publish area.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they are automatically syndicated online.)
Jetpack provides an automated and hands-free way to get more exposure online for your content on social media networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting function that allows your blog readers to engage with your website or blog, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature with 3rd-party plugins that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they plus1, like, or tweet your content. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they are typing their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can choose to include at the bottom of their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website or blog.)
To learn more about the benefits of using this powerful plugin, visit this site:
Social LinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a plugin that allows you to syndicate and drip-feed content to many authority websites, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed content to many social websites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to dozens of authority websites, such as:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Delicious, Linkagogo, Plurk, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
Visit the plugin website to learn more about this powerful plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get useful information about your content distribution efforts), we have written a detailed article where we explore several social media tracking tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns. More information:
The above are just some examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating 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 System: Content Syndication Stage – Summary
Once your website or blog and plugins have been fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do to begin bringing traffic is add content on a regular basis.
We have created a complete email email-based training course aimed at helping you come up with limitless content ideas for 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 explained in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Part 4
To read more, click on the link below:
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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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