Welcome to Part 4 of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part One, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to start generating more traffic is publish great content on a consistent basis!)
In Part 2, we discussed critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we looked at configuring WordPress.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 you will configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section, you will learn how to set up various WordPress plugins that can help bring traffic automatically to your site when you begin to add new content.
Why You Should Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which online marketing experts you get your advice from, you could end up spending an hour or more every day posting content on social media.
Most business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are recommending. If you are spending half your day posting updates on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter in addition to planning and writing content for your blog or website, how does anything else in your business get done?
(Keeping a business running is how most small business owners spend their time. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many business owners spend most of their working hours trying to keep their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
Marketing research done in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent at least 6 hours each week on social media (the rest 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 conducted today, the numbers would probably 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 consumed the most time online.
(Businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time marketing and promoting themselves online in order to compete and survive, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budgets, time, and resources and many different 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 promoting and marketing 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 sites can and will make decisions that can significantly impact your business without prior notification. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can control your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other sites.
Automating business systems and processes to leverage time is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited marketing budget, time, and resources. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels do you invest more budget, efforts, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not control (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting 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 The Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that allows you to automate the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more of your time, budget, and your efforts 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 strongly urge you to avoid using black hat strategies, sites, tools, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of services like Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not need to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this article series is not to manipulate online services or flaunt their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and get additional exposure online from websites frequented by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen in the previous section how many business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts advise. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited time, budget, and resources.
So, instead of posting content to different channels, which can be very time-consuming …
(Posting content to marketing channels one by one can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose this one 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 the distribution of your content to all other services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social channels and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content 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 website or blog as described in Part 2. Then, expertly configure things as shown in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then connect all of the dots with plugins such as the ones listed in the next section.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic System – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a look now at some traffic-generating plugins that can:
- Syndicate content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content via RSS feeds to other online properties
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 features.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Share your content automatically on several social accounts.)
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 details displayed in the Publish area.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it will be automatically shared online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides you with a hands-free, automated way to create more exposure online for your content on social sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting system that lets your visitors engage with your website or blog, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content as part of a social community.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature using a third-party commenting plugin that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread them online.
For example, a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they plus1, tweet, or like your post. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they type their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can choose to include with their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and visitors and create more user engagement on your website.)
To learn more about the benefits of this handy plugin, go here:
Social LinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that allows you to automatically syndicate content, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed your content to many online sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to many online platforms, including:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Delicious, Folkd, Instapaper, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about the benefits of using this powerful plugin, visit this 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 campaigns), we have written a detailed article on social media monitoring tools and technologies that are worth checking out and knowing about. Go here to learn more:
The above are just a few examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating and syndicating 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: Automated Content Sharing Stage – Summary
Once you have your site and plugins configured and set up, all you need to do then is add fresh content regularly to drive more web traffic organically.
If you need great ideas for posting content on your website or blog, we recommend subscribing 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 covered in the next section of our WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read more, click here:
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