Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to automate traffic to your site 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 site is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to automatically begin bringing new web traffic is add web content consistently!)
In Part 2, we look at critical setup decisions. We help 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 existing site was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we discuss the configuration phase of the automation system.
Here, we configure all the settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you will configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this section of the article series, we will show you how to set up various plugins that can help drive visitors automatically to your site simply by publishing web content on a consistent basis.
Why Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which marketing gurus you talk to, you could find yourself trying to spend 1-2 hours or more per day promoting your business on social media in addition to trying to manage your business, your content and your online presence.
Most small businesses lack the time, resources and budget to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise. If you are spending hours posting updates on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn in addition to writing articles for your blog or website, how will you get anything in your business done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours simply keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: NFIB)
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 remain 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 small businesses surveyed spent at least 6 hours each 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 numbers would probably be even 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 the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Small businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse)
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 focus their time on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited time, marketing budgets, and resources and many areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on various social media sites, 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 can significantly impact your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other websites.
Automating business processes to leverage time is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth channels for promoting and marketing a business creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited budgets, time, and resources. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels do you invest more of your time, efforts, and your budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that belong to other companies (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote 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 for automating the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more budget, efforts, and your time on,
- Invest most of your time building your own asset instead of someone else’s 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 software, techniques, websites, and anything designed to “game” or violate the terms of service and policies of services like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t have to involve 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 get additional exposure online from websites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that many small business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts recommend. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to individual marketing channels is very time-consuming!)
Why not use this method 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 once, and automate the distribution of your content to all other services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media channels 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your site as explained in Part 2. Then, configure things as shown in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you then connect all of the dots with 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 Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some examples of traffic-generation WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content via RSS to other blogs
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn and more as soon as you publish your content using a plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with loads of useful functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part Three …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
You can share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Share your content on various social networks.)
After all of the settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings appear in your post publishing area.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically be shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they will be automatically shared online.)
This is a hands-free, automated way to get more exposure online for your content on social websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting feature that lets your site users interact with your website or blog, post new comments, reply to other users and engage with your content as part of a community.
You can expand the WordPress built-in commenting feature with third-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share your content online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can improve user engagement on your web site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like backlinks, the ability to add twitter names to comments, using keywords in the username, and social enticements for sharing content. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they are typing their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included at the bottom of their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your web site.)
To learn more about using this WordPress plugin, visit the plugin site:
Social Link Machine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a plugin for WordPress that allows you to syndicate content, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed your content automatically to dozens of traffic-generating platforms)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to over 30 authority sites, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Linkagogo, Plurk, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Overblog, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
To learn more about using this handy plugin, visit this site: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get actionable information about your content distribution campaigns), we have written a detailed article where we explore over 30 social media measurement tools and technologies that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives. To learn more, visit this page:
The above are just a few examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating 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 Syndication Phase – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been set up and configured, all you need to do is publish new content regularly to automatically bring web traffic.
If you need great topics for content that you can post on your web site, then subscribe to our email training course on growing your business online with content marketing here:
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 our WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read the rest of this article series, click here:
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