Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to turn your website into an automated web traffic generating machine using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part One, we provide an overview of the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to automatically start attracting traffic is add web content consistently!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase of the traffic automation process. 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 site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part 3, we focus on the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure all the settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In this step, we will show you how to set up various plugins that can help drive visitors automatically to your website or blog.
Why Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on which marketing experts you listen to, you could end up trying to spend a couple of hours per day (or more) promoting your business on social media in addition to managing your business, your content and your online presence.
Most business owners simply lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are recommending. If you spent hours checking Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter in addition to writing content for your website or blog, how would you get anything else in your business done?
(Small businesses spend most of their working hours simply keeping their businesses up and running. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many business owners spend most of their time just 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.
A study of small businesses conducted in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent 6 or more hours each week on social media (most of the other businesses surveyed that used social media 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 even 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 consumed the most time online.
(Small businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend more time promoting and marketing themselves online in order to compete and survive, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budget, time, and resources and many different areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on a number of social websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. These sites often will make decisions that impact your business without consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building content on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other sites.
Automating systems and process to save time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited resources, budget, and time. For example:
- Which channels do you invest more time, budget, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting 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 share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy for automating your traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this strategy, 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 channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more of your efforts, budget, and your time on,
- Invest most of your 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 websites, methods, solutions, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of services like Google, Pinterest, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not have to involve using black hat techniques!)
The focus of this series of articles is to show you how to be smart with your limited resources and automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and increase your exposure online to websites visited 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, most small businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts advise. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to marketing channels one by one 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 once, and automate your content distribution to all other services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media channels and 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as described in Part Two. Then, expertly configure things as described in Part Three. After all this is in place, you can then automate your content distribution with plugins such as the ones listed in the following section.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at a few WordPress plugins that can:
- Syndicate content to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content via RSS to other web properties
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and more as soon as you publish your content using a plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many great features.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part 3 …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin 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 Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Publicize your posts to various social networks.)
After all settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details in your Publish box.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically get shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they are automatically shared online.)
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, go here: Jetpack WordPress Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting system lets your visitors interact with your site, post new comments, reply to other users and engage with your content.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature with third-party plugins that integrate with social media, helping to share and spread your content around.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they like, plus1, or tweet your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog 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 Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your site.)
Go here to learn more about using this handy plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a WordPress plugin that lets you automatically syndicate your content to over 30 authority sites, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate your content to dozens of social sites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to over 30 authority websites, such as:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Diigo, Plurk, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blogger, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
Visit the plugin site to learn more about this handy plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get useful information about your content marketing campaigns), we have created a comprehensive article listing many social media monitoring tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns. To learn more, go here:
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: Content Syndication Phase – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do to start generating web traffic is add fresh content regularly.
We have created an entire email email-based training course designed to help you come up with unlimited content ideas for posting to your website or blog:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is addressed in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Four
To keep reading this article, click here:
- Web Site Traffic Blueprint Part 5 – Learn How To Turn Your Website Into An Automated Traffic Machine
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"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie
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