Welcome to Part 4 of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a website into an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part One, we describe the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to automatically begin attracting traffic is add fresh content regularly!)
In Part Two, we discuss the setup phase. We explain the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part 3, we discuss the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 you will configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this article, you will learn how to set up various WordPress plugins that can drive visitors automatically to your site.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which online marketing guru you listen to, you could end up trying to spend a couple of hours each day (or more) promoting your business on social media, as well as running your business, creating content and managing your online presence.
Most small businesses lack the time, human resources and financial means to run a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are recommending. If you were to spend hours posting updates on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing articles for your blog or website, how would you get anything in your business done?
(Keeping their business up and running is how most small business owners spend their working hours. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many businesses 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 stay 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 businesses surveyed spent 6 or more hours each week on social media (most of the other businesses surveyed using social media 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 research was conducted today, the numbers would most likely be 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 was their most time-consuming online activity.
(Small businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend more time marketing and promoting themselves online in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to focus their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, budget, and time and many different areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another 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 have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. These sites can make decisions that can significantly impact your business without requiring your input. 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 publish your content automatically to other online properties.
Automating systems and process to save time is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth channels for promoting and marketing a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited budget, resources, and time. For example:
- Which of these channels should you invest more of your efforts, budget, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that do not belong to you (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring 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 share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy for automating your traffic generation with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should invest more time, budget, and efforts on,
- Invest most of your time and efforts building your own asset 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 staying away from all black hat strategies, websites, software, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the terms of service and policies of sites like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t require using black hat techniques!)
The focus of this article is to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and increase your exposure online to sites frequented by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that most small businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts recommend. 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 individual channels 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 your content distribution to all other channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media channels and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) automatically to other blogs and web properties using RSS
- Automatically import content (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 website or blog as explained in Part 2. Then, get it configured as shown in Part 3. After all this is in place, you can then automate the content distribution using plugins such as the ones listed in the section below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at some WordPress plugins that can:
- Distribute content to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content via RSS to other sites
Jetpack by WordPress.com
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, 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 loads of great functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part 3 …
(Connect Jetpack 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, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your content automatically to several social media sites.)
After all of the settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details in the Publish area.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically get shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they will be automatically shared online.)
Jetpack provides you with a hands-free way to get more exposure for your content online on social media sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress native commenting system allows your visitors to engage with your website, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content as part of a social community.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature with third-party plugins that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share them online.
For example, using a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like SEO backlinks, using keywords in the username, social enticements for sharing content, and adding twitter usernames to comments. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they are typing their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can include below their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website.)
Go here to learn more about using this powerful plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – Content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social LinkMachine is a plugin that allows you to automatically syndicate and drip-feed content, build backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate content automatically to over 30 social sites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to many authority platforms, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Folkd, Kippt, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Rebel Mouse, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about using this plugin, visit the plugin website: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get useful information about your content marketing campaigns), we have created a comprehensive article listing several social media measurement tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns. Go here to learn more:
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 System: Content Syndication Stage – Summary
Once your website or blog and plugins have been set up and expertly configured, all you have to do to automatically begin attracting new traffic is add content consistently.
If you need endless content ideas for your site, we recommend subscribing to our FREE email training series on content marketing 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 our series.
This is the end of Section Four
To keep reading about this topic, click here:
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
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