Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new traffic automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part 1, 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 or blog, all you have to do is add new content on a regular basis to automatically generate web traffic!)
In Part 2, we focus on the setup phase. We help you understand the best way to get started 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 site was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In Part Three, we focus on configuring the system.
Here, we configure all the settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure all the settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section of the series, we will show you how to set up various WordPress plugins that can drive new visitors automatically to your website or blog simply by posting new content on a regular basis.
Why You Should Consider Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which experts you get your advice from, you could find yourself spending 1-2 hours or more per day promoting your business on social media.
Most businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are advising. If you spend half your day checking Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn in addition to writing articles for your blog or website, how does anything in your business get done?
(Keeping a business running is how most small business owners spend their time. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many businesses spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent six or more 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.
(Businesses are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and marketing budget and many different areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on a number of social media sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or StumbleUpon. These sites can make decisions that impact your business without prior warning. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other websites.
Investing in business automation to leverage time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited budget, resources, and time. For example:
- Which of these channels do you invest more of your time, efforts, and budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you ultimately have no control over (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring the benefits of building content on your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Web Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that lets you automate the web traffic generation with WordPress.
With this method, 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 costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more time, budget, and your efforts on,
- Invest most of your efforts building your own asset instead of someone else’s 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 strongly recommend staying away from all black hat solutions, sites, techniques, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the policies and terms of service of sites like Pinterest, Facebook, Google.
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t have to involve using black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing here is to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and increase your exposure online to websites used by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that most businesses lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts recommend. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limited resources, time, and budget.
So, instead of posting content to different marketing channels, which is extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to services one at a time can be very 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 one-time, and automate your content distribution to all other 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress website or blog as described in Part 2. Then, configure it as described in Part 3. After all this is in place, you can then automate various processes using plugins such as the ones discussed below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic System – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at a number of traffic-generation WordPress plugins that can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically via RSS to other websites
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn 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 functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Distribute your posts to several social media networks.)
After all of the settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account options displays in the post publishing area.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new posts are automatically shared online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides you with a hands-free way to create more exposure for your content online on social networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting system that lets your site users interact with your website or blog, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content as part of a community.
You can expand the WordPress built-in commenting feature with 3rd-party commenting plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share them around.
For example, using a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your website or blog. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like using keywords in the name, backlinks, social enticements for content-sharing, and adding twitter usernames to comments. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they enter their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which can be included below their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv can attract more comments and create more user engagement on your website.)
Go here to learn more about this plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a WordPress plugin that allows you to automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to dozens of traffic-generating websites, build backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – drip-feed content to over 30 social websites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to dozens of traffic-generating platforms, including:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Linkagogo, Kippt, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, 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 tracking (so you can get actionable information about your content marketing efforts), we have written a detailed article listing a number of social media monitoring tools that you may want to check out. For more details, go 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: Content Syndication Process – Summary
Once your website and plugins have been configured and fully set up, all you have to do then to automatically start generating more web traffic is publish fresh content regularly.
We have created an entire email course designed to help you come up with limitless content for your site:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is covered in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
***
"I was absolutely amazed at the scope and breadth of these tutorials! The most in-depth training I have ever received on any subject!" - Myke O'Neill, DailyGreenPost.com
***