Welcome to Part Four of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part One, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is add fresh content regularly to automatically start generating more traffic!)
In Part Two, we looked at critical setup decisions. We helped you understand 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 website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In Part 3, we look at the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure all the settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 you will configure all the settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part 4, we explain how to set up various plugins that can help get traffic automatically to your website or blog as you begin posting new content.
Why Automate The Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which marketing gurus you listen to, you could end up trying to spend an hour or more each day promoting your business on social media.
Most businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts recommend. If you spend half your day posting updates on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter in addition to writing content for your blog or website, how can anything else in your business get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: NFIB)
Small businesses spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
A study of small businesses done by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent around six hours each week on social media (the other half of businesses surveyed that used 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 significantly 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 the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Businesses are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of 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 vital areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budget, time, and resources and many different 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 a number of social media 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 affect your business without consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building content on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other sites.
Automating systems and process to save time is not new. Businesses have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth channels for marketing and promoting a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited time, marketing budgets, and resources. For example:
- Which channels should you focus more budget, time, and your efforts 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 neglecting the benefits of building content on your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Web Traffic Generation With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy for automating your 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 invest more of your time, budget, and your efforts 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 web 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 avoiding black hat websites, software, techniques, and anything designed to “game” or violate the policies and terms of service of companies like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t require the use of black hat techniques!)
The focus of this article is to show you how to be smart with your resources and 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 in the previous section that many small businesses lack the time, resources and financial means 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 time, resources, and budget.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different channels is extremely 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 content one-time, and automate your content distribution to all other channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media channels and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) to other blogs and online properties using RSS
- Import content automatically (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 2. Then, get everything configured as described in Part 3. After all this is in place, you can then automate the process using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a few traffic-generation plugins that can be used to:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically via RSS to other web properties
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+ and more as soon as you publish new content using a WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with loads of great functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (set up in Part 3.) …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your content to several social accounts.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings displays in the Publish section.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically get shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your content will be automatically distributed online.)
Go here to learn more about this handy plugin: Jetpack Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress built-in commenting system allows your visitors to engage with your website, post new comments, reply to other users and engage with your content.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature using third-party plugins that integrate your comments with social media, helping to spread and share your content online.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they +1, like, or tweet your post. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they are entering their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can choose to include below their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website.)
To learn more about this powerful plugin, go here:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin that lets you automatically syndicate and drip-feed content, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – drip-feed content automatically to dozens of traffic-generating platforms)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to over 30 authority sites, such as:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Kippt, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Overblog, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, go here: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get actionable information about your content marketing campaigns), we have created a detailed article listing many social media measurement tools and technologies that you may want to check out. Go here to learn more:
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 System: Content Sharing Phase – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been set up and expertly configured, all you then need to do to begin bringing more traffic is publish web content consistently.
If you need help coming up with great ideas for posting content on your web site, we recommend subscribing to our email training series here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is covered in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read the rest of this article, 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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