Welcome to Part Four of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to automate traffic to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part One, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to begin bringing new traffic is add new content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we look at critical setup decisions. We explain the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing site is built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In Part Three, we discussed important configuration decisions.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 we show you how to configure all the settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this section, you will learn how to set up various WordPress plugins that can bring new visitors automatically to your website.
Why Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which experts you get your advice from, you could find yourself investing 1-2 hours or more per day posting content on social media while also running your business, creating content and managing your online presence.
Most small business owners simply lack the time, human resources and budget to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are prescribing. If you spent all of your time posting updates on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter in addition to writing articles for your website or blog, how would anything in your business ever get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their working hours just keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: NFIB)
Small business owners spend most of their time just 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.
A study of small businesses done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent at least six 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 survey was conducted today, the figures would most likely 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 are spending more time marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time promoting and marketing themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to prioritize their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited time, budgets, and resources and many business areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. These companies can and will 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 asset? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Automating business systems and processes to save time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increased availability of hundreds of new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited resources, marketing budget, and time. For example:
- Which of these channels do you invest more efforts, budget, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not own (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring the benefits of building content on your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote your business on?
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 for automating the web traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more of your efforts, budget, and your time on,
- Invest most of your time and 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 recommend staying away from all black hat techniques, websites, software, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the terms of service and policies of services like Twitter, Facebook, Google.
(Web traffic automation doesn’t have to involve the use of black hat methods!)
The purpose of this article series is to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to 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 budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limited budget, time, and resources.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to individual marketing channels is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not do 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 once, and automate the distribution of your content to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media channels and social 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your site as shown in Part Two. Then, configure it as shown in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you can then automate the process 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 look now at some examples of traffic-generating WordPress plugins that can help:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content to other online properties via RSS
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, 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 features.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part Three …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Publicize your content to several social accounts.)
After all plugin and account settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account details in the publishing area.)
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 will be automatically shared online.)
To learn more about this plugin, visit the plugin site: Jetpack Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting system lets your site users engage with your website, post new comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature using third-party plugins that integrate with social media, helping to share and spread your content online.
For example, a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they like, plus1, or tweet your content. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they are typing their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can include below their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv can attract more comments and create more user engagement on your website or blog.)
Go here for more information about this plugin:
Social Link Machine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a WordPress plugin that allows you to automatically syndicate content to over 30 social sites, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate and drip-feed your content to over 30 online platforms)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to over 30 social websites, such as:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Folkd, Plurk, Reddit, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
Visit this site to learn more about this great plugin: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get useful information about your content marketing campaigns), we have created a detailed article listing several social media tracking tools that will help you keep track of online trends, monitor competitor activity, see what online conversations are taking place that could affect your business, etc, see what online conversations are taking place that can affect your business,etc. More information:
The above are just a few 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 Automation System: Content Sharing Stage – Summary
Once your site and plugins have been set up and configured, all you have to do then to generate web traffic is add great content on a regular basis.
If you need endless content ideas for your site, we recommend subscribing to our email training series here:
Once you have 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 article in the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Four
To keep reading about this topic, click on the link below:
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