Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to drive new traffic automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part One, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to automatically begin bringing more traffic is add web content consistently!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we focused on important configuration decisions.
In this step, we configure all the settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this article, we will look at ways to automate traffic to your website with different WordPress plugins.
Why Automate Your Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on which marketing expert you talk to, you could find yourself investing a couple of hours per day (or more) posting content on social media, as well as trying to manage your business, your content and your web presence.
Many businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts recommend. If you spent half a day checking Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn in addition to planning and writing articles for your website or blog, how would anything in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their working hours 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.
Marketing research conducted by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent around six hours each week on social media (the rest spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This 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 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.
(Businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend more time marketing and promoting themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budgets, time, and resources and many business areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on various social 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 dramatically impact your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can have complete control of your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other websites.
Automating systems and process to leverage time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increasing availability of so many new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited time, budget, and resources. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you focus more of your efforts, budget, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not control (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating The Web Traffic Generation With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula for automating the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should focus more of your time, efforts, and your budget 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 recommend staying away from all black hat techniques, sites, software, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of services like LinkedIn, Facebook, Google.
(Automating your web traffic does not require using black hat techniques!)
The focus of this article is not to game online services or bypass their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can 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
We’ve just seen in the previous section how many small business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts advise. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limited budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels one at a time is very 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 social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) 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 get all this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as described in Part 2. Then, configure your site settings as explained in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you then connect all of the dots using plugins such as the ones discussed in the next section.
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 plugins that can help to:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content to other blogs via RSS feeds
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and more as soon as you publish new content using a plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many useful features.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part 3 …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
You can share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your posts to various 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 displays in the post publishing section.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it is automatically distributed online.)
To learn more about the benefits of using this great plugin, go here: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress native commenting function lets your visitors interact with your web site, post new comments, reply to other users and engage with your content as part of an online community.
You can expand the WordPress built-in commenting feature with a third-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they +1, like, or tweet your post. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they enter their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included below their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your site.)
Visit the plugin site to learn more about this plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a WordPress plugin that allows you to automatically drip-feed content to dozens of authority sites, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate your content automatically to over 30 online platforms)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to many authority websites, like:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Diigo, Kippt, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Sett, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
Visit the plugin site to learn more about this great plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get useful information about your content marketing efforts), we have written a comprehensive article about social media tracking tools that are worth checking out and knowing about here:
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 Blueprint: Automated Content Syndication Phase – Summary
Once your website and plugins have been configured and fully set up, all you have to do then is add new content regularly to automatically bring web traffic organically.
If you need endless topics for content that you can post on your site, we recommend subscribing to our email training series here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as can be improved. This step is explained in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Four
To keep reading about this topic, click on the link below:
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