Welcome to Part Four of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to drive traffic automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is publish new content regularly to bring more web traffic!)
In Part Two, we discuss the setup phase. We explain the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your site was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In Part 3, we looked at the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure all the settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure all the settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this step, we discuss ways to automate the traffic system with plugins.
Why You Should Automate Your Traffic Generation Process
Depending on who you listen to, you could find yourself investing an hour or two (or more) every day promoting your business on social media, as well as running your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Most small business owners simply lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts advise doing. If you are spending all of your time checking Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn in addition to writing articles for your website or blog, how will you get anything else in your business done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small business owners spend their working hours. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and make sales in order to survive.
Research conducted in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent six or more hours each week on social media (the other half 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 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 consumed the most time online.
(Small businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend more time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited budgets, resources, and time and many different areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on various social websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or StumbleUpon. These companies can and will make decisions that affect your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on someone else’s real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can control your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other online properties.
Automating processes to save time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth channels for marketing and promoting a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited resources, time, and marketing budget. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels should you invest more budget, time, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not own (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring 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 strategy for automating 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 other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more of your budget, time, and efforts 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 strongly urge you to avoid using black hat techniques, solutions, websites, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t need to involve using black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this article series is not to manipulate web services or bypass their terms of service, but 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 visited 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, many small business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to services individually is 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 one-time, and automate your content distribution to all other channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social channels and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content to other blogs and online 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 described in Part Two. Then, configure your site settings as explained in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then automate the process with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some examples of traffic-generation plugins that can help:
- Syndicate content to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically via RSS feeds to other blogs
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, 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 functions.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (set up in Part Three.) …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack – Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Share your posts on several social sites.)
After all of the settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account details displays in the Publish box.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your posts are automatically distributed online.)
Go here to learn more about this plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting system that allows your site users to engage with your website or blog, post comments, reply to other users and engage with your content as part of a community.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature with a number of 3rd-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share them 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 like, tweet, or +1 your content. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they are entering their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can include below their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website.)
Visit the plugin site to learn more about using this great plugin:
Social Link Machine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a WordPress plugin that lets you automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to many traffic-generating websites, build backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate your content to over 30 traffic-generating websites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to many online sites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Delicious, Folkd, Kippt, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Rebel Mouse, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about this plugin, visit the plugin site: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get actionable information about your content marketing efforts), we have created a detailed article where we explore many social media monitoring tools and technologies that are worth checking out and knowing about. More info:
The above are just some 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 Blueprint: Automated Content Syndication Stage – Summary
Once your website and plugins have been fully set up and configured, all you have to do then is add great content regularly to automatically bring more web traffic.
We have created an entire email course aimed at helping you never run out of content for posting to your web site:
Once you have 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 4
To read more, click on the link below:
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