Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to create an automated traffic generating machine using WordPress.
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 site is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is add new content regularly to start driving web traffic!)
In Part 2, we discussed critical setup decisions. We explained 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 existing site was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part 3, we focused on the configuration phase.
Here, we configure all the settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three we explain how to configure all the settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, we will discuss ways to automate the traffic-getting process using WordPress plugins.
Why You Should Automate The Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which business marketing guru you listen to, you could end up investing a couple of hours each day (or more) posting content on social media.
Many business owners simply lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are recommending. If you were to spend most of your time posting updates on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook in addition to planning and writing articles for your blog or website, how would you get anything else in your business done?
(Small businesses spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. Source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain 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 small businesses surveyed spent at least 6 hours per week on social media (most of the other businesses surveyed using 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 numbers would most likely be significantly 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.
(Small businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other areas …
(Businesses with limited budgets, resources, and time and many business areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on various social media websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or StumbleUpon. These sites can and will make decisions that can significantly impact your business without prior notification. Why invest so much time and effort building content on someone else’s real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can control your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other websites.
Investing in business automation to leverage time is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited resources, marketing budget, and time. For example:
- Which channels should you focus more of your efforts, budget, and your time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you ultimately have no control over (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating The Web Traffic Generation With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that allows you to automate the 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 channels,
- Determine which channels you should invest more of your 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 recommend avoiding black hat websites, strategies, tools, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of services like Facebook, YouTube, Google, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not have to involve the use of black hat methods!)
The focus of this article is to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to 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, most businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited time, budget, and resources.
So, instead of using this time-consuming approach …
(Posting content to different services one by one is extremely 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 once, and automate your content distribution to all other channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress website or blog as shown in Part Two. Then, get it all configured as described in Part 3. After all this is in place, you can then automate the process with plugins such as the ones listed in the section below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some traffic-generation WordPress plugins that can help:
- Post content to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content to other blogs via RSS feeds
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, 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 loads of useful functions.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (as described in Part Three.) …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
You can share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Share your content automatically on several social networks.)
After all of the settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings appear in your publishing box.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically get shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they are automatically syndicated online.)
To learn more about the benefits of this plugin, go here: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting function that lets your site users interact with your site, post comments, reply to other users and engage with your content as part of a social community.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature using a 3rd-party plugin that integrates your comments with social media, helping to spread and share them around.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can improve user engagement on your site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like search-indexable backlinks, ability to use keywords in the name, social enticements for content sharing, and adding twitter names to comments. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they are typing their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can choose to include with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv can attract more comments and improve user engagement on your website.)
Go here to learn more about this plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a plugin that lets you automatically syndicate your content to dozens of social sites, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate your content to many online platforms)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to many authority sites, such as:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Diigo, Plurk, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Rebel Mouse, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
Visit this website to learn more about this powerful plugin: 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 campaigns), we have created a detailed article where we explore 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 can affect your business, etc, see what online conversations are taking place that could affect your business,etc. Go here to learn more:
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 Automation Blueprint: Content Sharing Stage – Summary
Once you have your site and plugins fully set up and expertly configured, all you then need to do is post new content consistently to start generating more traffic.
If you need endless content ideas for your website, then subscribe to our FREE email training series here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is addressed in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read more, click on the link below:
***
"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
***