Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to turn a site into an automated web traffic generation machine using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part One of this article series, we described the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to automatically attract new web traffic is publish fresh content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we looked at critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your website was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we look at important configuration decisions.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 we show you how to configure all the settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, we look at ways to automate traffic to your website using various WordPress plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which business marketing guru you get your advice from, you could end up spending a couple of hours each day (or more) promoting your business on social media, as well as running your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Many businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are advising. If you were to spend all of your time checking Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter in addition to writing articles for your blog or website, how would anything else in your business ever get done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small businesses spend their time. Infographic: NFIB)
Many businesses spend most of their working hours trying to keep their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
Research conducted by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent 6 or more 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 done today, the figures would probably be higher.
- More than half of all 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 are spending more time marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time promoting and marketing themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to focus their time on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, budget, and time and many business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on a number of social websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. These sites can make decisions that can significantly affect your business without prior warning. Why invest so much effort and time building content on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can have complete control of your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Automating processes to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increasing availability of so many new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited marketing budget, resources, and time. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you invest more budget, efforts, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that do not belong to you (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Web Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that allows you to automate the traffic generation with WordPress.
With this method, 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 focus more of your efforts, budget, and your time on,
- Invest most of your time 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 that you stay away from all black hat tools, techniques, websites, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of sites like Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t require using black hat techniques!)
The purpose of 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 limited resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from 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, most small business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts advise. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited time, resources, and budget.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to different 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 once, and automate your content distribution to all other channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media sites and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content automatically 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your site as described in Part Two. Then, get everything configured as explained in Part 3. After all this is in place, you then automate the process using plugins such as the ones shown in the section below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a number of WordPress plugins that can:
- Syndicate content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content via RSS to other web properties
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, 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 loads of useful functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, 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 the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
You can share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Share your content on various social sites.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account details in the Publish section.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically get shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they will be automatically shared online.)
Jetpack provides you with a hands-free way to get more exposure for your content online on social media sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting function that lets your site users interact with your website or blog, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature using a 3rd-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them online.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can improve user engagement on your website. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like the ability to add twitter handles to comments, using keywords in the user name, social enticements for content sharing, and backlinks. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they are typing their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which they can include with their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website or blog.)
Visit this site to learn more about this plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – Content distribution plugin for WordPress)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that allows you to drip-feed your content, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate your content to dozens of social platforms)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to dozens of traffic-generating sites, like:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Delicious, Folkd, Plurk, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blogger, Rebel Mouse, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about this plugin, visit this website: Social LinkMachine
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 comprehensive article about social media measurement tools and technologies that will help you identify new business opportunities, track competitor activity, see what online conversations are taking place that affect your business,etc. Go here to learn more about this:
The above are just some examples of the many content distribution plugins that WordPress makes available.
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 System: Automated Content Syndication Process – Summary
Once you have your site and plugins set up and configured, all you then need to do is post new content on a regular basis to automatically start generating more traffic.
If you need endless content ideas for your site, then subscribe to our email training series here:
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 WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Section Four
To continue reading about this topic, click on the link below:
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"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie
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