Welcome to Part Four of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your site into an automated traffic generating machine using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part 1 of this article series, 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 website, all you have to do is publish content on a consistent basis to automatically begin attracting new traffic!)
In Part 2, we focus on the setup phase. 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 site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In Part 3, we discuss configuring the system.
Here, we configure all the settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure all the settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, we will look at ways to automate your traffic using WordPress plugins.
Why Automating The Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on which marketing guru you listen to, you could find yourself investing a couple of hours or more every day posting content on social media.
Most business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts prescribe. If you spend hours posting updates on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn in addition to planning and writing articles for your website or blog, how can anything in your business get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their working hours trying to keep 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 VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent six or more hours each week on social media (the other half 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 survey was conducted today, the figures 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 each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and budget and many 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 social media websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. These sites can make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much time and effort building content on someone else’s asset? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other online properties.
Investing in business automation to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited time, budgets, and resources. For example:
- Which channels do you invest more time, budget, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring the benefits of building content on your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating The Web Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that lets you automate your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should invest more of your efforts, budget, and time on,
- Invest most of your 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 avoiding black hat tools, methods, sites, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the policies and terms of service of companies like Pinterest, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not need to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this article series is not to game web services or flaunt their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites visited 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 business owners lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts recommend. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to different marketing channels can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not use this method 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:
- Automatically distribute content to social services and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content automatically to other blogs and online 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, configure your site settings as described in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you can then automate various processes with plugins such as the ones listed in the following section.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some traffic-generating plugins that can help:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically via RSS to other blogs
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+, LinkedIn 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 great functions.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Share your posts automatically on various social media sites.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings displayed in your Publish area.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they are automatically syndicated online.)
This is a hands-free, automated way to create more exposure online for your content on social media networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting feature that lets your visitors interact with your web site, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature using a 3rd-party plugin that integrates your comments with social media, helping to spread and share them online.
For example, a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they like, tweet, or +1 your post. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can choose to include below their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv Premium version can attract more comments and improve user engagement on your site.)
To learn more about this plugin, visit the plugin website:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – Content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget plugin that lets you syndicate and drip-feed your content to dozens of authority websites, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed content to dozens of traffic-generating platforms)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to dozens of online sites, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Linkagogo, Plurk, Reddit, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
Visit this website for more details about the benefits of this plugin: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get actionable information about your content distribution campaigns), we have written a detailed article about social media monitoring tools that will help you keep track of online trends, monitor competitor activity, see what online conversations are taking place that affect your business, etc, see what online conversations are taking place that can affect your business,etc. Go here to learn more about this:
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 Phase – Summary
Once you have your site and plugins expertly configured and set up, all you have to do is post great content on a consistent basis to start generating more web traffic organically.
We have created an entire email email-based training course aimed at helping you never run out of content ideas for posting to your web site:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as you can. This step is addressed in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read more, click on the link below:
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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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