Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your site into an automated web traffic generating machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part 1, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to automatically bring web traffic is post new content on a regular basis!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase of this system. We explained 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 with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In Part 3, we look at important configuration decisions.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three we show you how to configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this article, we look at ways to automate the traffic system using WordPress plugins.
Why You Should Automate The Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which expert you talk to, you could find yourself spending 1-2 hours or more every day posting content on social media.
Many business owners lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are advising. If you were to spend hours posting updates on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook in addition to researching and writing articles for your blog or website, how would anything else in your business ever get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses 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 grow in order to survive.
Research done in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent 6 or more 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 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 significantly 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.
(Businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time promoting and marketing themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited budget, resources, and time and many business areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another thing to keep in mind 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 Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. These sites often will make decisions that can significantly affect your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much effort and time 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 online accounts.
Automating processes to leverage time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited time, marketing budgets, and resources. For example:
- Which channels do you invest more of your efforts, time, and your budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you ultimately have little to no control over (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, 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 Generation Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy for automating the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more budget, efforts, and your time on,
- Invest most of your time and efforts 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 recommend staying away from all black hat websites, software, strategies, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the policies and terms of service of sites like LinkedIn, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t have to involve the use of 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 sites used by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen in the previous section that most small businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts recommend. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of posting content to different services individually, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to individual marketing channels can be 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 your content distribution to all other services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media sites and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as explained in Part Two. Then, configure your site settings as shown in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you can then connect all of the dots using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some WordPress plugins that can help:
- Distribute content to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically to other online properties via RSS
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, GooglePlus, 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 the WordPress.com account set up in Part Three …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack – Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts on several social sites.)
After configuring all of the account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details show in the Publish box.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new content is automatically distributed online.)
Jetpack provides a hands-free way to get more exposure for your content online on social networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting feature allows your blog readers to engage with your website, post new comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature using a third-party plugin that integrates with social media, helping to spread and share them online.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can create more user engagement on your website. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like using keywords in the name, social enticements for content sharing, adding twitter names to comments, and search-indexable backlinks. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included at the bottom of their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can help attract more comments and web traffic and create more user engagement on your website.)
Go here to learn more about this plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – Content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a WordPress plugin that lets you drip-feed your content to dozens of online sites, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed your content to dozens of traffic-generating sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to over 30 traffic-generating websites, such as:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Folkd, Plurk, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
Visit the plugin site to learn more about the benefits of this plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get useful information about your content distribution campaigns), we have written a comprehensive article about social media monitoring tools that you may want to check out. Go here to learn more about this:
The above are just some 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 Blueprint: Content Syndication Process – Summary
Once your website and plugins have been fully set up and expertly configured, all you then need to do is publish web content regularly to attract more web traffic organically.
We have created an entire email email-based training course aimed at helping you never run out of content ideas for your web site:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is covered in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part 4
To read more, click here:
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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