Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive traffic automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part 1, we described the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to bring more traffic is add fresh content on a regular basis!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase of the blueprint. We explained the best way to get started 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 website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In Part Three, we focused on the configuration phase of the traffic automation system.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you will configure all the settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, we discuss ways to automate the traffic system using WordPress plugins.
Why Automating Your Traffic Generation Makes Sense
Depending on who you talk to, you could find yourself trying to spend an hour every day (or more) posting content on social media in addition to trying to run your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Most business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are advising. If you spent hours checking Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn in addition to planning and writing articles for your blog or website, how would you get anything else in your business done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small businesses spend their working hours. Image 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 sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and make sales in order to survive.
Marketing research done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent at least six hours per week on social media (the rest 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 research was done 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 was the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend more time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to prioritize their time on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, budget, and time and many business areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on various social websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. These companies can make decisions that impact your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on someone else’s real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other sites.
Automating processes to leverage time is not new. Businesses have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited resources, time, and marketing budgets. For example:
- Which channels should you invest more of your time, efforts, and your budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Web Traffic Generation With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula for automating your web traffic generation 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 online marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should invest more budget, efforts, and your time on,
- Invest most of your 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 that you stay away from all black hat sites, tools, strategies, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of sites like Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t require using black hat methods!)
The focus of this series of articles 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 sites 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, many small businesses lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited time, budget, and resources.
So, instead of posting content to different marketing channels, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels one by one 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 your content distribution to all other channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social services and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) automatically to other blogs and web 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 shown in Part 2. Then, get it all configured as described in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you 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 Automation Blueprint – Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some traffic-generating WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Distribute content to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content via RSS to other online properties
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, 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 many great features.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part Three …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack – Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your content automatically to various 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 settings in your Publish box.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they will be automatically shared online.)
To learn more about the benefits of this WordPress plugin, go here: Jetpack by WordPress.com
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting function allows your blog readers to interact with your web site, post new comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature using a 3rd-party plugin that integrates your comments with social media, helping to spread and share your content around.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like the ability to add twitter handles to comments, search-indexable backlinks, social enticements for sharing content, and using keywords in the username. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they are typing their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which they can include at the bottom of their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website or blog.)
Go here to learn more about this plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that lets you syndicate content to over 30 online sites, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed your content automatically to many authority platforms)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to many online websites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Linkagogo, Plurk, Zotero, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Blogger, Rebel Mouse, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
For more information about the benefits of this WordPress plugin, visit the plugin site: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get actionable information about your content marketing efforts), we have written a detailed article on social media measurement tools that are worth checking out and knowing about. For more details, go here:
The above are just some examples of the many content distribution plugins that are available to WordPress users.
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: Automated Content Sharing Stage – Summary
Once your site and plugins have been configured and set up, all you have to do to drive more traffic is publish content regularly.
If you need endless content ideas for your site, we recommend subscribing to our FREE email training series on content marketing here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as can be improved. This step is covered in the next article in the WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Part Four
To keep reading this article, click on the link below:
***
"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie
***