Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part One, we provide an overview of the traffic automation process, and 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 or blog, all you have to do to automatically start driving web traffic is post new content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we discuss the setup phase of the traffic automation system. We help you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your site was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we discussed the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure all the settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure all the settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, we will discuss ways to automate traffic generation with WordPress plugins.
Why Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on who you listen to, you could end up trying to spend an hour or more each day promoting your business on social media.
Many small business owners simply lack the time, resources and budget to employ the services of a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts recommend doing. If you spent most of your time checking Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter in addition to writing articles for your blog or website, how would anything in your business ever get done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small businesses spend their time. Source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses 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 remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
Marketing research conducted by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent at least six 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 research was done today, the numbers would probably 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 consumed the most time online.
(Businesses are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of 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 prioritize their time on other equally important areas …
(Businesses with limited budget, resources, and time and many different business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social media sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. These sites can make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without prior warning. Why invest so much time and effort building content on someone else’s real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other websites.
Automating business 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 channels for promoting and marketing a business creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited budget, time, and resources. For example:
- Which channels do you focus more budget, time, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, 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 Your Web Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that allows you to automate your web traffic generation with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should focus more efforts, time, and budget on,
- Invest most of your time and 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 urge you to avoid using black hat techniques, websites, tools, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the policies and terms of service of companies like LinkedIn, Facebook, Google.
(Web traffic automation doesn’t have to involve using black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this article is to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and get additional exposure online from websites 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 small businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts advise. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of posting content to each different channel, which is extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels is very time-consuming!)
Why not choose 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 content one-time, and automate the distribution of your content to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social services and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) 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 this done?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress website as explained in Part 2. Then, get it all configured as described in Part 3. After all this is in place, you can then automate these processes using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a look now at some plugins that can help:
- Post content to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content to other blogs via RSS
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ 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 features.
After Jetpack has been installed, 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 Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts on various social networks.)
After configuring all of the account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details appear in your Publish area.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically get shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they are automatically shared online.)
Go here to learn more about the benefits of this plugin: Jetpack Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting system that lets your site users engage with your site, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature with a number of 3rd-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share them online.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can create more user engagement on your web site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like the ability to add twitter usernames to comments, social enticements for sharing content, ability to use keywords in the user name, and search-indexable backlinks. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they enter their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv Premium version can attract more comments and web traffic and improve user engagement on your web site.)
To learn more about this plugin, visit this website:
SocialLinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social LinkMachine is a plugin that lets you automatically syndicate your content to many traffic-generating sites, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed your content automatically to over 30 authority websites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to over 30 authority websites, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Instapaper, Reddit, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
To learn more about using this 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 distribution campaigns), we have written a detailed article about social media measurement tools and technologies that are worth checking out and knowing about here:
The above are just a few 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 Automation Blueprint: Automated Content Sharing Stage – Summary
Once you have your website or blog and plugins configured and fully set up, all you have to do then to drive more traffic is add web content on a regular basis.
If you need help coming up with topics for content that you can post on your site, then subscribe to our FREE email training course on content marketing here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is explained in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Four
To keep reading, click on the link below:
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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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