Welcome to Part Four of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part One, we provided an overview of the traffic automation process, and 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 begin attracting new web traffic is add fresh content on a regular basis!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase of the blueprint. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we look at important configuration decisions.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, you will learn how to set up various plugins that can get web traffic automatically to your site.
Why You Should Consider Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which experts you listen to, you could find yourself trying to spend a couple of hours or more every day posting content on social media in addition to trying to run your business, creating content and managing your online presence.
Many businesses simply lack the time, human resources and financial means to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are recommending. If you are spending half your day posting updates on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn in addition to planning and writing articles for your website or blog, how does anything else in your business get done?
(Keeping a business running is how most small business owners spend their working hours. Infographic: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s also 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 email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent at least 6 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 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 the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Small businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend more time promoting and marketing themselves online in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to prioritize their time on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budgets, resources, and time 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 social media websites, 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 can dramatically impact your business without prior notification. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can have complete control of your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other sites.
Automating business systems and processes to save time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth channels for marketing and promoting a business creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited time, resources, and budgets. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels should you focus more efforts, time, and budget 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 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 lets you automate your web traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should focus more budget, efforts, and time 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 urge you to avoid using black hat strategies, software, websites, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the policies and terms of service of services like Twitter, Facebook, Google.
(Automating your web traffic does not require the use of black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this article series is not to manipulate online services or bypass their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to 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
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 advise doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of posting content to each marketing channel, which can be extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to services one at a time is 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 content one-time, and automate the distribution of your content to all other services.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media services and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content to other blogs and online 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 website or blog as explained in Part Two. Then, configure everything as shown in Part 3. After all this is in place, you can then automate the content distribution using plugins such as the ones discussed in the next section.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a few plugins that can be used to:
- Post content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content via RSS feeds to other websites
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+ 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 Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part 3 …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Share your content on various social networks.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account details displays in the Publish area.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new posts are automatically syndicated online.)
Jetpack provides you with a hands-free, automated way to get more exposure online for your content on social media sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting feature that lets your visitors engage with your website or blog, post new comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content as part of a social community.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature with a third-party plugin that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread your content around.
For example, a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they tweet, like, or plus1 your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they enter their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included with their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv can attract more comments and improve user engagement on your website.)
Visit this site to learn more about this plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a WordPress plugin that lets you automatically drip-feed your content to over 30 traffic-generating websites, build backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and create second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed your content automatically to many authority websites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to many authority websites, like:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Folkd, Kippt, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Sett, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
To learn more about this great plugin, visit the plugin website: 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 campaigns), we have written a comprehensive article about social media monitoring tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives. For more details, 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 Distribution Process – Summary
Once your website or blog and plugins have been fully set up and configured, all you have to do then is post fresh content consistently to attract web traffic.
If you need help coming up with endless great ideas for content that you can post on your web 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 the web-traffic generation process. This step is covered in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read the rest of this article series, click here:
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