Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive traffic automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part One, we described the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to automatically start attracting web traffic is add fresh content regularly!)
In Part 2, we discuss the setup phase. We explain the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing website was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In Part Three, we look at the configuration phase.
Here, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you will configure all the settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part 4, we will discuss ways to automate the traffic system using various plugins.
Why Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on which business marketing gurus you listen to, you could find yourself trying to spend an hour or two (or more) every day posting content on social media.
Many small businesses lack the time, human resources and financial means to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts recommend. If you spend half your day checking LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter in addition to planning and writing articles for your website or blog, how will you get anything in your business done?
(Keeping a business up and running is how most small businesses spend their working hours. Source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their time just 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.
A study of small businesses conducted in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent 6 or more hours each week on social media (the other half of businesses surveyed using social media spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was done today, the numbers would probably be even higher.
- More than half of all businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more to create a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media was their most time-consuming online activity.
(Small businesses are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time marketing and promoting themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to prioritize their time on other equally important areas …
(Businesses with limited time, marketing budget, and resources and many areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social media websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. These companies can make decisions that impact your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on someone else’s asset? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can have complete control of your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other online accounts.
Investing in automation to leverage time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increased availability of many new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited time, resources, and budgets. For example:
- Which of these channels do you invest more of your budget, efforts, and your time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Tumblr, 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 Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy for automating your 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 web marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should invest more efforts, budget, and 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 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, sites, methods, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of companies like Google, Facebook, Pinterest, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not require the use of black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this series of articles is to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and increase your exposure online to websites frequented 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 businesses lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts recommend. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited resources, time, and budget.
So, instead of choosing this time-consuming approach …
(Posting content to individual channels can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not use a smarter, time-saving strategy like the one shown below 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 marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social sites and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) automatically to other blogs and web 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 get all this done?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress site as explained in Part 2. Then, configure your site settings as shown in Part Three. 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 System – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a look now at some examples of traffic-generating plugins that can help:
- Post content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content via RSS feeds to other web properties
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, 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 great functions.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
You can share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts automatically on various social accounts.)
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 details appear in your post publishing section.)
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 distributed online.)
This is a hands-free way to get more exposure online for your content on social networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting function that allows your visitors to interact with your web site, post comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature using third-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share them around.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they tweet, like, or plus1 your post. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which they can include with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and improve user engagement on your website or blog.)
To learn more about using this powerful plugin, visit this site:
Social Link Machine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that allows you to drip-feed content to many traffic-generating platforms, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate content to dozens of traffic-generating sites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to many authority websites, such as:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Plurk, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
Visit the plugin website to learn more about the benefits of this plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get actionable information about your content marketing campaigns), we have written a comprehensive article listing a number of social media measurement tools and technologies that are worth checking out and knowing about. Go here for more details:
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 Stage – Summary
Once your website and plugins have been expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do is post new content regularly to automatically generate more web traffic organically.
We have created an entire email email-based training course designed to help you never run out of great content ideas for posting to your 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 article in our WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
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