Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to automate traffic to your website using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part One, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to begin bringing web traffic is publish content regularly!)
In Part Two, we look at the setup phase. We help you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we looked at the configuration phase of the traffic automation blueprint.
In this step, we configure all the settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 we explain how to configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part 4, we look at ways to automate your traffic using various WordPress plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate The Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which marketing gurus you listen to, you could end up trying to spend an hour every day (or more) posting content on social media in addition to trying to run your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Many business owners 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 marketing experts are prescribing. If you are spending half your day checking Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook in addition to writing articles for your blog or website, how will you get anything else in your business done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Image source: NFIB)
Small 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 make sales in order to survive.
A study of small businesses done by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent six or more hours per week on social media (the other half spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This usage of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was conducted today, the figures would most likely be higher.
- More than half of all small 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 each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and marketing budgets and many business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on various social media websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. These sites can make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on someone else’s real estate? With WordPress, you can control your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other websites.
Automating business processes to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited time, resources, and marketing budgets. For example:
- Which of these channels should you focus more of your efforts, budget, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not own (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring the benefits of building content on your own website?
- 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 we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that lets you automate your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this strategy, 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 channels you should invest more of your time, efforts, and your budget on,
- Invest most of your time and efforts 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 recommend staying away from all black hat websites, techniques, software, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of services like Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t have to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
The focus of this series of articles 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 increase your exposure online to websites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that many business owners 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 work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to different services individually is very time-consuming!)
Why not opt for a smarter, time-saving approach like the one shown below 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:
- Automatically distribute content 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 WordPress site as explained in Part Two. Then, get it configured as shown in Part 3. After all this is in place, you can then automate these processes using plugins like the ones listed in the section below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a number of plugins that can:
- Syndicate content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content via RSS to other web properties
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn 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, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack – Publicize)
Configure this section to share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Publicize your content to 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 details in your Publish area.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new content will be automatically distributed online.)
To learn more about using this WordPress plugin, visit the plugin website: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting system lets your visitors interact with your website, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature with 3rd-party plugins that integrate your comments with social media, helping to spread and share them around.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can create more user engagement on your website. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like adding twitter usernames to comments, using keywords in the name, social enticements for content-sharing, and search-indexable backlinks. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they are typing their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which they can choose to include with their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your web site.)
For more details about the benefits of this handy plugin, visit this site:
Social LinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget plugin that allows you to automatically drip-feed your content, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate your content to many social websites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to many social platforms, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Delicious, Linkagogo, Instapaper, Zotero, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Blogger, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
Go here for more details about the benefits of using this powerful plugin: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get useful information about your content distribution efforts), we have written a comprehensive article about social media monitoring tools that are worth checking out and knowing about. Go here to learn more:
The above are just a few examples of the many content distribution plugins that are available to WordPress users.
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 Automation System: Automated Content Syndication Stage – Summary
Once your site and plugins have been fully set up and configured, all you have to do then is post web content regularly to automatically begin attracting web traffic.
We have created a complete email email-based training course designed to help you never run out of great content ideas for your site:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is explained in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read more, click here:
***
"I love the way your email series "Infinite Web Content Creation Training Series" is documented and presented. It is very absorbing and captivating. The links and tutorials are interesting and educational. This has motivated me to rewrite my content following the concepts I am learning from the email series." - Mani Raju, www.fortuneinewaste.com
***