Welcome to Part Four of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to turn your website into an automated web traffic generating machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is post great content on a consistent basis to begin bringing more web traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to get started 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 was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In Part Three, we looked at important configuration decisions.
Here, we configure all the settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you will configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, we will show you how to set up various plugins that can help get visitors automatically to your site just by adding new content regularly.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic Generation
Depending on which marketing gurus you talk to, you could end up trying to spend a couple of hours or more every day posting content on social media, as well as managing your business, your content and your web presence.
Many small businesses simply lack the time, resources and budget to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise doing. If you are spending half your day posting updates on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook in addition to writing articles for your website or blog, how will you get anything in your business done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time just keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: NFIB)
Small businesses spend most of their time keeping 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.
Research done in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent around 6 hours per 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 was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was conducted today, the numbers would most likely be significantly 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 their most time-consuming online activity.
(Businesses are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend more time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to prioritize their time on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, marketing budgets, and time and many different areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on a number of social media 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 often will make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on someone else’s real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other online accounts.
Automating business processes to leverage time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth channels for marketing and promoting a business creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited time, resources, and budgets. For example:
- Which channels do you invest more of your efforts, time, and your budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that do not belong to you (e.g. YouTube, 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-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method for automating your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing 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 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 urge you to avoid using black hat sites, strategies, software, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the policies and terms of service of services like Google, Facebook, YouTube, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t need to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this article is not to game online services or break 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 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, many business owners lack the time, resources and budget 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 posting content to individual channels, which is extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to different services individually can be very time-consuming!)
Why not choose this time-saving approach 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:
- Automatically distribute content to social media sites and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) 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 of this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as shown in Part 2. Then, expertly configure things as described in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then connect all of the dots with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a few traffic-generating plugins that can help:
- Post content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically to other sites via RSS
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus 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 loads of great functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part Three …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize feature)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Distribute your posts to various social media sites.)
After configuring all plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings displayed in your Publish box.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they will be automatically shared online.)
This is a hands-free way to get more exposure for your content online on social media sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting feature that allows your site users to engage with your web site, post new comments, reply to other users and engage with your content as part of a community.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature with a 3rd-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates with social media, helping to spread and share your content around.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they tweet, like, or +1 your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they are entering their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included with their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can attract more comments and traffic and improve user engagement on your website.)
To learn more about this great plugin, visit this website:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that lets you automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to many authority sites, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed your content to dozens of traffic-generating platforms)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to many social websites, including:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Delicious, Linkagogo, Instapaper, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blogger, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, go here: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get useful information about your content distribution efforts), we have created a detailed article listing several social media monitoring tools and technologies that will help you keep track of online trends, monitor competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that affect your business, etc, see what conversations are taking place online that can affect your business,etc. Go here for more information:
The above are just some 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 System: Content Distribution Process – Summary
Once you have your site and plugins configured and set up, all you need to do then is publish new content on a consistent basis to begin bringing more web traffic organically.
If you need help coming up with endless ideas for posting content on your web site, then subscribe to our email training series 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 article in the WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read the rest of this article series, 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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