Welcome to Part Four of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new visitors automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part 1, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to begin bringing web traffic is add web content consistently!)
In Part 2, we focused on critical setup decisions. We explained 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 site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In Part 3, we focus on the configuration phase of this blueprint.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 you will configure all the settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, we discuss ways to automate traffic to your website using plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic Generation
Depending on which marketing gurus you talk to, you could find yourself trying to spend a couple of hours or more every day promoting your business on social media while also running your business, creating content and managing your online presence.
Many small businesses simply lack the time, human resources and financial means to employ the services of a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are advising. If you spent all of your time checking Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter in addition to writing articles for your website or blog, how would anything in your business get done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small businesses spend their time. Source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent around six hours per week on social media (the rest 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 done today, the numbers would most likely be significantly higher.
- More than half of all small businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more creating 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 spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend more time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to prioritize their time on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budget, time, and resources and many different areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social media websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. These companies often will make decisions that affect your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much time and effort building content on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other sites.
Automating business processes to save time is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increased availability of so many new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited resources, time, and budgets. For example:
- Which channels should you focus more of your budget, efforts, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that lets you automate the 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 online marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more of your time, budget, and your efforts on,
- Invest most of your efforts building your own asset instead of someone else’s 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 that you stay away from all black hat methods, websites, tools, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of services like Facebook, YouTube, Google, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not require using black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing here is to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to 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
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, many business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limited time, resources, and budget.
So, instead of using this time-consuming approach …
(Posting content to different marketing channels 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 once, and automate your content distribution to all other channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social channels and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as shown in Part Two. Then, expertly configure it as described 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 Blueprint – Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a few traffic-generation WordPress plugins that can be used to:
- Distribute content to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically to other web properties via RSS
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ 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 many great features.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Publicize your posts automatically to various social accounts.)
After configuring all plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account details show in your post publishing area.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they are automatically distributed online.)
Visit the plugin website to learn more about the benefits of using this handy plugin: Jetpack by WordPress.com
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting system allows your blog readers to engage with your website or blog, post comments, reply to other users and engage with your content.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature with a third-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread your content online.
For example, using a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like social enticements for content sharing, search-indexable backlinks, adding twitter handles to comments, and using keywords in the username. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they are typing their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which can be included at the bottom of their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your web site.)
For more information about this WordPress plugin, visit the plugin site:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that lets you automatically syndicate your content to dozens of traffic-generating sites, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – drip-feed your content to many authority sites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to dozens of social sites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Diigo, Instapaper, Zotero, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
To learn more about the benefits of using this plugin, visit the plugin site: 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 efforts), we have written a comprehensive article where we explore many social media measurement tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives. More info:
The above are just some examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating and sharing 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 Automation System: Automated Content Distribution Process – Summary
Once you have your site and plugins expertly configured and set up, all you then need to do to start generating more traffic is post content regularly.
We have created a complete email training series aimed at helping you come up with unlimited content ideas for your website:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as can be improved. This step is covered in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Part 4
To continue reading, click on the link below:
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