Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to turn a website into an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part 1 of this article series, we described the traffic automation process, and explained 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 to automatically begin bringing new web traffic is add new content on a regular basis!)
In Part Two, we focused on critical setup decisions. We explained 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 existing site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In Part 3, we discussed the configuration phase of this blueprint.
Here, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure all the settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part 4, we explain how to set up various plugins that can bring new visitors automatically to your site whenever you begin adding web content consistently.
Why Automating Your Traffic Generation Makes Sense
Depending on which marketing guru you get your advice from, you could end up trying to spend an hour or two per day (or more) posting content on social media.
Many small businesses simply lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts recommend doing. If you were to spend half a day checking Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing content for your website or blog, how would anything in your business ever get done?
(Keeping their business up and running is how most small business owners spend their working hours. Image source: NFIB)
Many business owners spend most of their working hours trying to keep their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, 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 in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent around six hours each 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 was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was done today, the figures would probably be 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 was the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Small businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend more time promoting and marketing themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other equally important areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budgets, time, and resources and many different areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other important 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 Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. These companies often will make decisions that affect your business without prior warning. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other online accounts.
Automating processes to leverage time is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increased availability of hundreds of new channels for promoting and marketing a business online creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited resources, marketing budget, and time. For example:
- Which channels should you invest more of your efforts, budget, and your time 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 ignoring the benefits of building content on your own domain?
- 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 for automating the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more budget, efforts, and time 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 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 strongly urge you to avoid using black hat strategies, software, sites, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of companies like Google, Facebook, YouTube, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not require using black hat methods!)
The purpose of this article series is to show you how to be smart with your limited resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing 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
We’ve just seen that most small businesses lack the time, human resources and financial means 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 resources, budget, and time.
So, instead of choosing this approach …
(Posting content to individual channels can be very time-consuming!)
Why not choose this method 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 media sites and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content automatically to other blogs and web 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress website as explained in Part 2. Then, expertly configure things 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 System – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a number of WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Syndicate content to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically via RSS feeds to other websites
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn 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 many great functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (set up in Part 3.) …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
You can share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your content on several social networks.)
After configuring all plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize options in the post publishing section.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it will be automatically shared online.)
Jetpack provides you with a hands-free way to create more exposure online for your content on social websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting feature that lets your blog readers interact with your website or blog, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature with 3rd-party plugins that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share your content around.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can improve user engagement on your web site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like social enticements for sharing your content, adding twitter names to comments, SEO backlinks, ability to use keywords in the name. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they type their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included at the bottom of their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your site.)
Go here to learn more about this powerful plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a WordPress plugin that allows you to syndicate and drip-feed your content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed your content to over 30 traffic-generating platforms)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to over 30 authority websites, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Instapaper, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about using this handy plugin, visit the plugin site: 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 efforts), we have written a detailed article about social media tracking tools and technologies that are worth checking out and knowing about. To learn more about this go here:
The above are just a few examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating 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 System: Content Distribution Phase – Summary
Once your website or blog and plugins have been configured and fully set up, all you have to do is add web content on a consistent basis to begin bringing traffic organically.
We have created an entire email email-based training course designed to help you never run out of content ideas for your website:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as can be improved. This step is explained in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Part 4
To read more, click on the link below:
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