Welcome to Part 4 of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic generating machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part 1, we describe the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is publish great content consistently to automatically bring more web traffic!)
In Part 2, we focus on the setup phase of the traffic automation process. We explain the best way to start 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 website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we focused on the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this section of the series, we will show you how to set up various plugins that can get new traffic automatically to your website or blog just by publishing fresh content consistently.
Why You Should Consider Automating The Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which expert you get your advice from, you could end up investing an hour or two per day (or more) posting content on social media, as well as managing your business, your content and your web presence.
Many small businesses simply lack the time, human resources and budget to employ the services of a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts recommend. If you were to spend hours posting updates on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook in addition to planning and writing content for your blog or website, how would you get anything in your business done?
(Small businesses spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their working hours keeping 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 done by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent around 6 hours each week on social media (the rest spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This use of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was done today, the numbers would probably be 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 their most time-consuming online activity.
(Businesses are spending more time 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 puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to prioritize their time on other equally important areas …
(Businesses with limited budgets, resources, and time 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 social websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or StumbleUpon. These sites often will make decisions that can significantly impact 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 have complete control of your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Investing in automation to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited resources, marketing budget, and time. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels should you focus more efforts, budget, and your time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that belong to other people (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 Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula for automating your web traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this strategy, 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 of your 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 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 urge you to avoid using black hat websites, solutions, techniques, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the terms of service and policies of sites like YouTube, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t require using black hat techniques!)
The focus of this series of articles is not to manipulate web services or break their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites frequented 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 business owners lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts recommend. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, time, and resources.
So, instead of posting content to different services individually, which can be very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different channels 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 once, and automate your content distribution to all other channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social channels and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress site as described in Part Two. Then, get it configured as shown in Part 3. After all this is in place, you then automate the process using plugins.
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 look now at a number of traffic-generating plugins that can help:
- Distribute content to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content via RSS to other online properties
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+ and more as soon as you publish new content using a WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with loads of great functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (as described in Part Three.) …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack – Publicize feature)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Distribute your content to several social sites.)
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 account settings in your post publishing box.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it will be automatically syndicated online.)
Jetpack provides you with an automated and hands-free way to get more exposure online for your content on social sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting feature that allows your site users to engage with your web site, post new comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature using a 3rd-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, a WordPress 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 reward features like social enticements for sharing your content, ability to use keywords in the username, search-indexable backlinks, and adding twitter usernames to comments. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they are entering their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which can be included below their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your web site.)
To learn more about this handy plugin, visit this site:
Social LinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social LinkMachine is a plugin for WordPress that lets you syndicate your content to dozens of online sites, build backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – drip-feed your content to many authority platforms)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to many traffic-generating sites, including:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Folkd, Plurk, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
Visit the plugin website to learn more about using this plugin: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get actionable information about your content distribution efforts), we have written a comprehensive article on social media measurement tools and technologies that are worth checking out and knowing about. To learn more, go here:
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 System: Content Sharing Phase – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site and plugins set up and configured, all you need to do then is add fresh content on a regular basis to automatically bring traffic.
We have created an entire email training series aimed at helping you come up with limitless content ideas for your website:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is explained in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
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"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
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