Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to create an automated web traffic machine using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part 1, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to begin attracting more traffic is publish great content regularly!)
In Part 2, we look at the setup phase of the blueprint. We help you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website is built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we discuss configuring WordPress.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three we show you how to configure all the settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In this article, we look at ways to automate the traffic system using various plugins.
Why Automate The Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on which marketing expert you get your advice from, you could end up trying to spend an hour or more a day promoting your business on social media while also managing your business, your content and your web presence.
Most businesses lack the time, human 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 spent most of your time checking LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook in addition to writing content for your website or blog, how would anything in your business ever get done?
(Keeping a business up and running is how most small businesses spend their working hours. Source: NFIB)
Small business owners spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
Marketing research conducted in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent at least 6 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 done today, the figures would most likely be significantly higher.
- More than half of all small 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 are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, marketing budget, and time and many different business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on a number of social media websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. These companies often will make decisions that affect your business without prior notification. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other online accounts.
Automating systems and process to leverage time is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the availability of so many new channels for promoting and marketing a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited time, marketing budget, and resources. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels do you invest more of your efforts, time, and your budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that allows you to automate the traffic-getting process 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 web marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should invest more of your efforts, budget, and time 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 urge you to avoid using black hat sites, solutions, methods, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the terms of service and policies of sites like Google, Pinterest, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t require using black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this series of articles is not to manipulate online services or bypass their terms of service, but to show you how to be smart with your limited resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and 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
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, most business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of posting content to each channel, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels one by one is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not opt for this method 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 channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social 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 WordPress website or blog as explained in Part Two. Then, get it all configured as explained in Part 3. After all this is in place, you then automate these processes using 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 Web Traffic Automation System – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some examples of WordPress plugins that can help:
- Post content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content via RSS to other online properties
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 new content using a WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with loads of useful functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Distribute your content automatically to various social sites.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings in the publishing section.)
Now, whenever 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 shared online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides an automated and hands-free way to get more exposure for your content online on social media networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress native commenting feature lets your blog readers engage with your site, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress built-in commenting feature using 3rd-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, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can improve user engagement on your website or blog. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like social enticements for content-sharing, SEO backlinks, adding twitter handles to comments, and using keywords in the name. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they enter their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included with their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv can attract more comments and web traffic and improve user engagement on your website or blog.)
For more details about this great plugin, go here:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – Content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget plugin that lets you syndicate and drip-feed your content to dozens of authority sites, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed your content automatically to many authority websites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to over 30 traffic-generating platforms, including:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Kippt, Reddit, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Rebel Mouse, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
To learn more about this plugin, go here: 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 distribution efforts), we have created a detailed article listing several social media monitoring tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns. Go here for more information:
The above are just some examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating and sharing 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 Sharing Stage – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins expertly configured and set up, all you need to do is add new content regularly to automatically generate more traffic.
We have created an entire email course designed to help you never run out of content for your site:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is covered in the next section of our WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section Four
To continue reading this article, click here:
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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