Welcome to Part 4 of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic machine using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part 1, we described the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to automatically begin bringing traffic is add content on a consistent basis!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to start 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 was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we focus on important configuration decisions.
Here, we configure all the settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section of the article series, we look at ways to automate the traffic system with different WordPress plugins.
Why Automate Your Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on who you listen to, you could end up trying to spend a couple of hours or more per day promoting your business on social media while also running your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Most small businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts recommend doing. If you spend hours posting updates on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook in addition to planning and writing articles for your blog or website, how can anything in your business get done?
(Keeping their business up and running is how most small business owners spend their working hours. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their time trying to keep their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent at least 6 hours per week on social media (the other half of businesses surveyed that used social media 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 consumed the most time online.
(Businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend more time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to focus their time on other equally important areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, marketing budget, and time and many business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on a number of social sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or StumbleUpon. These sites can make decisions that can significantly impact your business without consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on someone else’s asset? With WordPress, you can control your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other online accounts.
Automating business systems and processes to leverage time is not 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 channels for promoting and marketing a business online creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited time, resources, and marketing budget. For example:
- Which channels should you focus more of your time, budget, and your efforts 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 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 we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that allows you to automate your web traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should invest more of your time, budget, and efforts on,
- Invest most of your 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 staying away from all black hat techniques, software, websites, and anything designed to “game” or violate the policies and terms of service of services like Facebook, Google, Pinterest, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t require using black hat methods!)
What we are focusing here is to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing 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
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, most businesses lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, time, and resources.
So, instead of posting content to each marketing channel, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to services one at a time can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not opt for a smarter, time-saving approach like 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 one-time, and automate the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media channels and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) to other blogs and online 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 this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as explained in Part Two. Then, get everything configured as explained in Part Three. After all this is in place, you can then automate these processes with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a look now at some traffic-generating plugins that can help:
- Post content to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically to other sites via RSS
Jetpack by WordPress.com
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, GooglePlus 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 many great functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (as described 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 on Jetpack)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Distribute your posts to several social networks.)
After all of the account and plugin settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize options show in your publishing section.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it is automatically shared online.)
To learn more about this handy plugin, go here: Jetpack WordPress Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress commenting function lets your blog readers interact with your site, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content as part of an online community.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature with 3rd-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments with social media, helping to spread and share your content online.
For example, using a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they tweet, like, or plus1 your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they type their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can choose to include with their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv Pro version can attract more comments and create more user engagement on your web site.)
For more information about using this WordPress plugin, visit the plugin site:
Social LinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that lets you automatically drip-feed your content to many authority sites, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – drip-feed your content to many traffic-generating sites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to dozens of authority websites, like:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Diigo, Plurk, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Overblog, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
For more details about the benefits of this powerful plugin, go here: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get useful information about your content marketing efforts), we have written a comprehensive article listing many social media measurement tools and technologies that are worth checking out and knowing about. To learn more, visit this page:
The above are just a few examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating and syndicating 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 Syndication Stage – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins set up and configured, all you then have to do is post fresh content on a consistent basis to drive traffic organically.
If you need endless topics for content that you can post on your web 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 process. This step is covered in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Section Four
To continue reading about this topic, 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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