Welcome to Part 4 of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a site into an automated traffic generating machine using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part One of this article series, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to automatically attract more traffic is add content on a regular basis!)
In Part Two, we looked at critical setup decisions. We helped you understand 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 website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In Part Three, we looked at configuring WordPress.
Here, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure all the settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part 4, you will learn how to set up various WordPress plugins that can help drive new traffic automatically to your site.
Why Automating The Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on which marketing guru you talk to, you could find yourself trying to spend a couple of hours per day (or more) posting content on social media.
Many small businesses simply lack the time, human resources and budget to employ the services of a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise. If you spent hours posting updates on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in addition to planning and writing articles for your blog or website, how would anything in your business ever get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours just keeping their businesses up and running. Image source: NFIB)
Small business owners spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
Research conducted by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent around six 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 survey was done today, the numbers would probably 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 was the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Small businesses are spending more time marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse)
As 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 important areas …
(Businesses with limited time, budget, and resources and many areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing 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 LinkedIn. These sites can make decisions that impact your business without prior notification. Why invest so much time and effort building content on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other sites.
Automating processes to leverage time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increased availability of so many new channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited time, resources, and marketing budgets. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you invest more of your budget, efforts, 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 neglecting the benefits of building content on your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method for automating your 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 online marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should focus more of your budget, time, and your efforts on,
- Invest most of your time building your own asset 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 recommend avoiding black hat websites, software, methods, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the policies and terms of service of companies like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not have to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this article series is to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and increase your exposure online to sites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that most small businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited time, budget, and resources.
So, instead of posting content to each different channel, which is extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels one at a time 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:
- Automatically distribute content to social sites and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as explained in Part Two. Then, get everything configured as explained in Part 3. After all this is in place, you can then connect all of the dots with plugins such as the ones shown in the section below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a few WordPress plugins that can help:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content to other web properties via RSS feeds
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, 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 useful features.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part 3 …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts on several social networks.)
After configuring all of the plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details displays in your post publishing box.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new posts will be automatically syndicated online.)
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, go here: Jetpack WordPress Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting function lets your visitors engage with your website or blog, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions as part of a community.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature with 3rd-party plugins that integrate your comments with social media, helping to spread and share them online.
For example, a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your web site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like ability to use keywords in the user name, search-indexable backlinks, adding twitter usernames to comments, and social enticements for content-sharing. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they are typing their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included with their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your web site.)
To learn more about the benefits of using this plugin, go here:
Social Link Machine
(Social LinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
SocialLinkMachine is a plugin that lets you drip-feed your content to over 30 social platforms, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate content automatically to over 30 traffic-generating sites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to many online sites, including:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Linkagogo, Kippt, Reddit, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
For more details about the benefits of using this plugin, go here: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get actionable information about your content marketing efforts), we have created a detailed article where we explore a number of social media monitoring tools that are worth checking out and knowing about. To learn more, visit this page:
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 Blueprint: Content Sharing Phase – Summary
Once your website and plugins have been set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do to automatically start driving traffic is post great content on a consistent basis.
If you need endless content ideas for your site, we recommend subscribing to our email training series here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as you can. This step is explained in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read the rest of this article series, click here:
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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