Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part One of this article series, we provided an overview of the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is add content on a regular basis to start generating traffic!)
In Part Two, we focus on the setup phase of the automation process. We help you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In Part Three, we discuss the configuration phase.
Here, we configure all the settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section of the article series, you will learn how to set up various plugins that can help bring new traffic automatically to your website.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic Generation
Depending on which marketing expert you get your advice from, you could find yourself investing an hour each day (or more) promoting your business on social media while also trying to run your business, creating content and managing your online presence.
Many business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts advise doing. If you spend most of your time checking Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing content for your blog or website, how does anything in your business get done?
(Keeping a business running is how most small business owners spend their working hours. Infographic: 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 sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent at least six hours per week on social media (the rest 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 conducted 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 consumed the most time online.
(Businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to prioritize their time on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and budgets and many different business areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on a number of social sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These sites can and will make decisions that impact your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building content on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own real estate and post your content automatically to other online accounts.
Automating business processes to leverage time is not new. Businesses have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the availability of so many new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited resources, budget, and time. For example:
- Which marketing channels should you focus more time, efforts, and your budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that lets you automate your web traffic generation 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 time, budget, and efforts 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 strongly recommend avoiding black hat sites, techniques, software, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of companies like Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t have to involve the use of black hat methods!)
What we are focusing here is not to game web services or break their terms of service, but to show you how to be smart with your limited resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and increase your exposure online to websites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, most small business owners lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts advise. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited time, budget, and resources.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels one at a time can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose this 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 once, and automate the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites 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 described in Part Two. Then, get it all configured as explained in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you then automate your content distribution using plugins like 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 Blueprint – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some examples of plugins that can help to:
- Distribute content to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content to other sites via RSS feeds
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn and more as soon as you publish your 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 set up in Part 3 …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Share your content automatically on several social accounts.)
After configuring all of the plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings displayed in the 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 new posts are published, they are automatically distributed online.)
To learn more about this plugin, go here: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress built-in commenting function lets your visitors interact with your website, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature using a 3rd-party plugin that integrates your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content online.
For example, a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they like, tweet, or +1 your content. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they are entering their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which they can include at the bottom of their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your web site.)
Go here to learn more about this plugin:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a WordPress plugin that allows you to drip-feed content, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate your content automatically to dozens of online sites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to many online platforms, including:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Folkd, Instapaper, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
Go here to learn more about this plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get actionable information about your content marketing campaigns), we have written a detailed article on social media measurement tools and technologies that are worth checking out and knowing about. For more info, see this article:
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 Automation Blueprint: Automated Content Syndication Stage – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been expertly configured and fully set up, all you then need to do is post web content on a consistent basis to automatically begin bringing more traffic.
We have created an entire email email-based training course designed to help you come up with limitless content ideas for your website or blog:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is explained in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Section 4
To keep reading about this topic, click on the link below:
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