Welcome to Part Four of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to drive visitors automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part 1, we described the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to automatically begin bringing traffic is publish web content consistently!)
In Part 2, we look at the setup phase. We help you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your site is built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we focused on the configuration phase.
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 all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, we will discuss ways to automate traffic generation using WordPress plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate The Traffic Generation
Depending on which marketing experts you listen to, you could end up trying to spend an hour each day (or more) promoting your business on social media in addition to managing your business, your content and your web presence.
Many small business owners simply lack the time, human resources and financial means to employ the services of a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are prescribing. If you spent hours posting updates on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn in addition to planning and writing articles for your website or blog, how would anything else in your business ever get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their working hours simply keeping their businesses up and running. Source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many businesses spend most of their time trying to keep 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.
A study of small businesses done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent around 6 hours each week on social media (most of the other 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 survey was done today, the numbers would most likely be significantly higher.
- More than half of all small 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)
As small businesses spend more time promoting and marketing themselves online in order to compete and survive, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited time, budget, and resources and many different areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social media websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or StumbleUpon. These sites can make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on someone else’s real estate? With WordPress, you can control your own virtual real estate and distribute 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 exponential growth channels for promoting and marketing a business online creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited resources, time, and marketing budgets. For example:
- Which marketing channels should you focus more of your efforts, time, and your budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring the benefits of building content on your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that allows you to automate the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more of your 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 urge you to avoid using black hat solutions, websites, methods, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of services like Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t require the use of black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this article series 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 get additional exposure online from websites frequented by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen in the previous section that most small businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited time, resources, and budget.
So, instead of posting content to each marketing channel, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different channels can be very time-consuming!)
Why not use 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 one-time, and automate the distribution of your content to all other services.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social channels 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 of this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as shown in Part Two. Then, get it configured as described in Part 3. After all this is in place, you can then automate these processes with plugins such as the ones listed in the section below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a look now at some WordPress plugins that can be used to:
- Distribute content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content to other sites via RSS
Jetpack by WordPress.com
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, 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 great features.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (set up in Part Three.) …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Share your posts on several social media sites.)
After all of the plugin and account settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings in your publishing section.)
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 new posts are automatically shared online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides a hands-free, automated way to get more exposure online for your content on social sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress commenting function lets your visitors interact with your site, post new comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions as part of a community.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature using 3rd-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments with social media, helping to spread and share them online.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like adding twitter names to comments, backlinks, social enticements for sharing your content, and using keywords in the name. 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 at the bottom of their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your site.)
Visit the plugin site to learn more about this powerful plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social Link Machine is a WordPress plugin that lets you automatically drip-feed your content, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate and drip-feed your content to many social sites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to over 30 social sites, like:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Kippt, Zotero, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
To learn more about the benefits of using this plugin, visit the plugin website: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get useful information about your content distribution efforts), we have written a detailed article on social media measurement tools that are worth knowing about here:
The above are just a few 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 Blueprint: Content Syndication Phase – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins fully set up and configured, all you have to do to begin bringing more web traffic is add content on a regular basis.
We have created a complete email course designed to help you come up with endless content for your website:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is covered in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read more, click on the link below:
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