Welcome to Part Four of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to create an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part 1 of this article series, we described the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is post web content on a consistent basis to start generating more traffic!)
In Part 2, we discuss the setup phase. We explain the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part 3, we looked at the configuration phase of this process.
Here, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three we explain how to configure all the settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section of the series, we discuss ways to automate the traffic-getting process using WordPress plugins.
Why Automating The Traffic Generation Makes Sense
Depending on who you get your advice from, you could find yourself trying to spend a couple of hours per day (or more) promoting your business on social media.
Most small businesses simply lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts recommend doing. If you spent hours posting updates on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing content for your website or blog, how would anything in your business ever get done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small business owners spend their working hours. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
Marketing research done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent six or more hours per week on social media (most of the other businesses surveyed that used 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 done today, the figures would most likely 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 their most time-consuming online activity.
(Small businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend more time marketing and promoting themselves online in order to compete and survive, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and budgets and many different business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another thing to keep in mind 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 YouTube. These companies often will make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without first consulting you. 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 post your content automatically to other sites.
Automating systems and process to save time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes 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 small business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited marketing budget, resources, and time. For example:
- Which of these channels should you invest 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. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring 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 With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that allows you to automate the web traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this formula, 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 web marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more time, efforts, and your budget on,
- Invest most of your efforts building your own asset 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 strategies, solutions, websites, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the terms of service and policies of services like YouTube, Facebook, Google.
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t need to involve the use of black hat methods!)
The focus of this series of articles is 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 websites 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, many small business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limited budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to different channels can be very time-consuming!)
Why not do this 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 the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media channels and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as described in Part 2. Then, configure it as explained in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then automate the content distribution using plugins like the ones discussed in the following section.
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 plugins that can be used to:
- Syndicate content to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically to other blogs via RSS
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ 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, you will need to 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 …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Distribute your posts automatically to various social media networks.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings in your post publishing section.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it is automatically distributed online.)
To learn more about the benefits of this handy plugin, visit the plugin website: Jetpack Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting system lets your site users interact with your website or blog, post comments, reply to other users and engage with your content as part of a social community.
You can expand the WordPress built-in commenting feature using 3rd-party plugins that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can improve user engagement on your website or blog. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like search-indexable backlinks, adding twitter usernames to comments, social enticements for content sharing, and ability to use keywords in the username. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they are typing their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included below their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and web traffic and improve user engagement on your website.)
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, visit the plugin website:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – Content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin that lets you syndicate content to over 30 social sites, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate your content automatically to dozens of social websites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to many authority sites, like:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Diigo, Plurk, Reddit, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Overblog, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
Visit this website to learn more about 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 efforts), we have written a comprehensive article where we explore a number of social media monitoring tools and technologies that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns. See this page to learn more:
The above are just some examples of the many content distribution plugins that are available to WordPress users.
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 Stage – Summary
Once your website and plugins have been expertly configured and set up, all you have to do then is publish fresh content on a consistent basis to attract new traffic organically.
If you need endless great ideas for posting content on your website, then subscribe to our FREE email training series on content marketing 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 addressed in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Part 4
To continue reading about this topic, click here:
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
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