Welcome to Part 4 of our Website 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 article series:
In Part One of this article series, we describe the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is publish great content on a consistent basis to automatically attract more web traffic!)
In Part Two, we looked at critical setup decisions. We helped you understand 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 existing website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In Part 3, we discussed configuring WordPress.
In this step, we configure all the settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section of the series, you will learn how to set up various WordPress plugins that can help bring new traffic automatically to your website or blog.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which marketing expert you get your advice from, you could end up spending a couple of hours each day (or more) posting content on social media.
Most business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise. If you spent all of your time posting updates on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook in addition to writing content for your blog or website, how would anything in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours just keeping their businesses up and running. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many businesses spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and make sales in order to survive.
Research conducted by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent at least 6 hours each week on social media (the rest spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This usage of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was conducted today, the numbers would probably be even 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 spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend more time marketing and promoting themselves online in order to compete and survive, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and marketing budget and many business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on various social media websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. These sites can make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without prior notification. Why invest so much effort and time building content on someone else’s asset? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can control your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other sites.
Investing in business automation to save time is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the availability of many new channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited budgets, time, and resources. For example:
- Which marketing channels should you focus 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. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on 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 Web Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method for automating the web traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this method, 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 costs,
- Determine which channels you should focus more efforts, time, and your budget 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 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 avoiding black hat software, techniques, websites, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of companies like YouTube, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not have to involve using black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this article 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 sites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that many small business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited time, budget, and resources.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different channels can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not opt for a smarter, time-saving strategy like the one shown below 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 services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media sites and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) 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 this done?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as explained in Part Two. Then, get it all configured as shown in Part 3. After all this is in place, you then connect all of the dots using plugins like the ones shown below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at some examples of traffic-generation WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Distribute content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content via RSS feeds to other online properties
Jetpack
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 many useful functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to 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 a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Distribute your content automatically to various social networks.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings displays in your Publish section.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically get shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your posts are automatically shared online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides you with a hands-free, automated way to get more exposure for your content online on social media websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting feature lets your blog readers interact with your website or blog, post comments, reply to other users and engage with your content as part of an online community.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature with a third-party plugin that integrates your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content online.
For example, a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like the ability to add twitter names to comments, social enticements for sharing your content, ability to use keywords in the user name, and SEO backlinks. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can choose to include with their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website.)
To learn more about the benefits of using this plugin, go here:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that lets you automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate your content to over 30 traffic-generating platforms)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to many authority sites, including:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Kippt, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Overblog, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
Visit this website for more details about using this plugin: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get useful information about your content distribution campaigns), we have written a detailed article listing many social media tracking tools that you may want to check out. For more details, go here:
The above are just some examples of the many content distribution plugins that are available to WordPress users.
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 Sharing Phase – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do to begin bringing new web traffic is publish fresh content on a consistent basis.
If you need endless content ideas for your site, we recommend subscribing to our email training course on growing your business online with content marketing here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is covered in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Part Four
To keep reading about this topic, click here:
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