Welcome to Part Four of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using WordPress.
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 web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to attract new web traffic is post fresh content regularly!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In Part 3, we discussed the configuration phase.
Here, we configure all the settings that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 you will configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part 4, we will show you how to set up various plugins that can help drive new visitors automatically to your website or blog.
Why Automate The Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which marketing guru you talk to, you could end up investing an hour or two (or more) every day posting content on social media.
Most businesses 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 advise. If you spent all of your time checking Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn in addition to writing articles for your blog or website, how would you get anything else in your business done?
(Small businesses spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many business owners spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
Research conducted in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent six or more hours each week on social media (the other half of 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 done today, the figures would probably be significantly 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 the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Small businesses are spending more time marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend more time promoting and marketing themselves online in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to focus their time on other equally important areas …
(Businesses with limited budgets, time, and resources and many business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social media 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 Pinterest. These sites can and will make decisions that impact your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can control your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other sites.
Investing in automation to leverage time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited resources, marketing budget, and time. For example:
- Which of these channels do you invest more of your efforts, budget, and your time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating The 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 or blog and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more time, efforts, and budget on,
- Invest most of your time 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 recommend avoiding black hat methods, tools, sites, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of sites like Facebook, Google, YouTube, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t require using black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this article is not to game web services or bypass their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to 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
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, most small business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of posting content to individual marketing channels, which can be very time-consuming …
(Posting content to individual 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 once, and automate your content distribution to all other channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your site as described in Part Two. Then, configure everything as described in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you can then automate various processes with plugins like the ones shown in the following section.
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 traffic-generation WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Distribute content to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content to other online properties via RSS
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus, 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 functions.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part Three …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack – Publicize)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your content on various social accounts.)
After all account and plugin settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account details in the post publishing area.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it is automatically distributed online.)
For more information about the benefits of this WordPress plugin, go here: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress commenting feature allows your visitors to interact with your site, post comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions as part of a community.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature using a third-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they +1, like, or tweet your post. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can include with their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your site.)
To learn more about using this plugin, go here:
Social LinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a plugin for WordPress that allows you to automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to over 30 social platforms, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate your content to many online websites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to over 30 traffic-generating sites, including:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Plurk, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
Visit the plugin website to learn more about the benefits of using this handy plugin: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get actionable information about your content marketing campaigns), we have written a detailed article on social media measurement tools and technologies that are worth checking out and knowing about here:
The above are just a few 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 Blueprint: Automated Content Sharing Stage – Summary
Once your website and plugins have been set up and configured, all you then have to do to automatically start generating more web traffic is post content on a consistent basis.
We have created a complete email email-based training course aimed at helping you never run out of great content ideas for posting to your web site:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is covered in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
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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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