Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic generating machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part One of this article series, we describe the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is post new content on a consistent basis to begin bringing traffic!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase of the blueprint. We helped you understand 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 site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we discussed the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure all the settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part 4, we explain how to set up various WordPress plugins that can drive traffic automatically to your site just by adding new content on a consistent basis.
Why Automate Your Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on which expert you listen to, you could end up spending an hour or two per day (or more) promoting your business on social media.
Many businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise doing. If you were to spend hours posting updates on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook in addition to researching and writing content for your website or blog, how could you get anything else in your business done?
(Keeping a business up and running is how most small businesses spend their time. Infographic: NFIB)
Small business owners spend most of their working hours trying to keep their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent six or more hours per 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 usage of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was conducted today, the numbers would most likely be even higher.
- More than half of all small businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more creating a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media consumed the most time online.
(Businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend more time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to prioritize their time on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, budgets, and time 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 social media sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These sites often will make decisions that impact your business without prior notification. 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 virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other websites.
Investing in automation to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increasing availability of many new channels for promoting and marketing a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited time, resources, and budgets. For example:
- Which of these channels should you invest more of your efforts, budget, and your time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method for automating the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this strategy, 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 invest more of your budget, efforts, and your time 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 urge that you stay away from all black hat tools, sites, methods, and anything designed to “game” or violate the policies and terms of service of sites like YouTube, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t require the use of black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing here is to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from websites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that most business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with 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 time-saving method 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 the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social services and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content 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 website or blog as shown in Part Two. Then, get everything configured as explained in Part 3. After all this is in place, you can then automate the content distribution with plugins such as the ones listed in the following section.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at some traffic-generating WordPress plugins that can help:
- Post content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content via RSS to other websites
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, 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 loads of useful features.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part 3 …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
You can share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts on several social media networks.)
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 your Publish box.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your post will be automatically syndicated online.)
Go here for more details about the benefits of using this plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting feature that lets your site users interact with your web site, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature using a third-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they like, tweet, or plus1 your post. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they type their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which can be included with their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can attract more comments and create more user engagement on your website.)
Go here to learn more about the benefits of this plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – Content distribution plugin for WordPress)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that lets you automatically syndicate your content, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate content to many online sites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to over 30 authority platforms, including:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Plurk, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
Go here to learn more about the benefits of using this plugin: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get useful information about your content marketing campaigns), go here to learn more about social media monitoring tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns:
The above are just a few examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating and syndicating 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 System: Content Sharing Phase – Summary
Once your site and plugins have been set up and configured, all you then have to do is add fresh content on a regular basis to start generating new web traffic.
We have created an entire email training series designed to help you come up with endless content for your website or blog:
Once you have 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 article in our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Part 4
To read the rest of this article series, 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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