Welcome to Part Four of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to drive new visitors automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part One, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to automatically drive web traffic is publish great content consistently!)
In Part Two, we focus on the setup phase. We help 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 site, and what to do if your website is built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we discuss the configuration phase of the automation process.
Here, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 we explain how to configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, we will show you how to set up various plugins that can get new traffic automatically to your site.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which marketing expert you listen to, you could end up trying to spend a couple of hours or more each day promoting your business on social media, as well as trying to manage your business, your content and your online presence.
Most small businesses simply lack the time, human resources and budget to employ the services of a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are advising. If you were to spend most of your time posting updates on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter in addition to planning and writing articles for your blog or website, how would anything in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time just keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many business owners spend most of their working hours 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 VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent around 6 hours each week on social media (the other half 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 probably be significantly higher.
- More than half of all small 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 small businesses spend more time marketing and promoting themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to focus their time on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and budgets and many different business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social media sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or StumbleUpon. These sites can make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on someone else’s real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Investing in business automation to save time is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth channels for promoting and marketing a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited resources, marketing budgets, and time. For example:
- Which channels should you invest more time, budget, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not control (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating The 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 traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this strategy, 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 channels,
- Determine which channels you should invest more efforts, budget, and time on,
- Invest most of your time 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 urge that you stay away from all black hat software, techniques, sites, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the policies and terms of service of sites like Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not require the use of black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this article series is to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and marketing 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 business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts are prescribing. 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 marketing channels individually is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not use this 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 once, and automate the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content automatically 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 of this done?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress website as described in Part 2. Then, get it all configured as described in Part 3. After all this is in place, you then automate the content distribution with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic System – Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at a few traffic-generation WordPress plugins that can be used to:
- Distribute content to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content via RSS feeds to other online properties
Jetpack by WordPress.com
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, 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 installing Jetpack, 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 a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your content automatically on several social sites.)
After all settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings displayed in the Publish section.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it will be automatically shared online.)
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, go here: Jetpack WordPress Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress commenting function lets your blog readers engage with your website or blog, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions as part of a social community.
You can expand the WordPress built-in commenting feature with a 3rd-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content around.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can improve user engagement on your website or blog. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like adding twitter handles to comments, social enticements for content sharing, ability to use keywords in the user name, and backlinks. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they type their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your site.)
To learn more about the benefits of this powerful plugin, go here:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that allows you to syndicate and drip-feed content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate content automatically to many authority sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to many traffic-generating platforms, including:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Folkd, Kippt, Zotero, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Rebel Mouse, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, 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 (so you can get actionable information about your content marketing efforts), we have written a comprehensive article where we explore over 30 social media tracking tools that are worth knowing about. To learn more, go here:
The above are just some examples of the many content distribution plugins that WordPress makes available.
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: Content Syndication Stage – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been expertly configured and set up, all you then have to do to start attracting traffic is publish great content consistently.
If you need great content ideas for your website or blog, we recommend subscribing to our FREE email training series on growing your business with content marketing here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is explained in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Part 4
To read more, click here:
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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