Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to drive visitors automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part One of this article series, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is post new content on a regular basis to generate more web traffic!)
In Part Two, we focus on the setup phase of the automation blueprint. We help you understand the best way to start 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 existing site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we look at important configuration decisions.
Here, we configure all the settings that can 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 section of the article series, we explain how to set up various WordPress plugins that can help drive new traffic automatically to your website or blog whenever you begin adding content regularly.
Why Automate The Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which experts you talk to, you could end up trying to spend 1-2 hours every day (or more) posting content on social media while also running your business, creating content and managing your online presence.
Many businesses simply lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise. If you were to spend hours posting updates on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter in addition to planning and writing content for your website or blog, how could you get anything in your business done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours just keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: NFIB)
Small businesses spend most of their working hours just 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 grow in order to survive.
Research conducted in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent around six 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 done 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 the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Small businesses are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time marketing and promoting themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other equally important areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, budget, and time and many areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. These companies can and will make decisions that impact your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building content on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can control your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other online properties.
Investing in automation to leverage time is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the availability of so many new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited time, resources, and marketing budgets. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you invest more of your budget, time, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, 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 include in your marketing strategy?
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 method that allows you to automate your web traffic generation with WordPress.
With this formula, 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 web marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should focus more time, efforts, and budget on,
- Invest most of your time and efforts building your own asset 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 strategies, solutions, websites, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of companies like Google, Pinterest, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t require using black hat methods!)
The focus of this article series is not to game online services or flaunt their terms of service, but to show you how to be smart with your 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
We’ve just seen that many businesses lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, time, and resources.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different services one at a time can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not use this time-saving strategy 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 the distribution of your content to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) 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 WordPress website or blog as shown in Part Two. Then, configure things as shown in Part Three. After all this is in place, you can then automate the content distribution with plugins like the ones shown in the section below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic System – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some traffic-generating plugins that can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Distribute 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 Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus and more as soon as you publish your content using a WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many useful functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part 3 …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Configure this section to share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Distribute your posts to several social media accounts.)
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 the Publish box.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it is automatically syndicated online.)
Visit the plugin site to learn more about this great plugin: Jetpack Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress commenting feature allows your site users to interact with your site, post new comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content as part of an online community.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature with a third-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates your comments with social media, helping to spread and share them online.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they tweet, like, or +1 your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they type their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which they can choose to include below their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website.)
For more details about the benefits of using this plugin, visit the plugin website:
SocialLinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – Content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that allows you to syndicate and drip-feed your content to dozens of authority platforms, build backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed content automatically to many online platforms)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to dozens of authority websites, including:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Folkd, Instapaper, Reddit, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
To learn more about the benefits of this plugin, go here: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get actionable information about your content marketing efforts), we have written a comprehensive article listing over 30 social media monitoring tools and technologies that are worth checking out and knowing about. For more information, go here:
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 System: Automated Content Sharing Phase – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site and plugins set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do to automatically begin attracting new traffic is publish fresh content on a consistent basis.
If you need endless content ideas for your website, we recommend subscribing to our email training course on 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 addressed in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part 4
To keep reading, 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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