Welcome to Part Four of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a site into an automated traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part 1, we provided an overview of the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to generate more web traffic is publish content regularly!)
In Part Two, we discuss the setup phase of this system. We help you understand the best way to get started 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 existing website is built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In Part 3, we discuss important configuration decisions.
Here, we configure all the settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you will configure all the settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, you will learn how to set up various WordPress plugins that can get visitors automatically to your site.
Why Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on which experts you listen to, you could find yourself investing 1-2 hours or more every day posting content on social media.
Most small businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to employ the services of a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts recommend doing. If you spent hours checking Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook in addition to writing articles for your blog or website, how would anything else in your business ever get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: NFIB)
Many businesses spend most of their time trying to keep 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.
Research conducted by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent around six 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 usage of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was done today, the numbers would probably 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 consumed the most time online.
(Businesses spend 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 as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to focus their time on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited budgets, time, and resources and many areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or StumbleUpon. These companies can make decisions that can significantly impact your business without prior warning. Why invest so much effort and time building content on someone else’s real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other sites.
Investing in automation to leverage time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited time, budgets, and resources. For example:
- Which of these channels should you focus more of your efforts, time, and your budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not control (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, 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 Your Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that lets you automate your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should focus more of your budget, time, 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 strongly recommend staying away from all black hat strategies, solutions, sites, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of services like Facebook, YouTube, Google, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t require the use of black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing here is not to game web services or bypass their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and marketing efforts, and increase your exposure online to sites frequented 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, most small business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of using this approach …
(Posting content to different channels is extremely 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 once, and automate your content distribution to all other services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social sites and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content to other blogs and web 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 Two. Then, get it all configured as shown in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then connect all of the dots using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a few plugins that can be used to:
- Distribute content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically via RSS to other online properties
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus and more as soon as you publish new content using a 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 you set up in Part Three …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Distribute your content automatically to various social media accounts.)
After configuring all of the plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings show in your Publish box.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they will be automatically syndicated online.)
This is an automated and hands-free way to get more exposure online for your content on social media sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting feature allows your visitors to interact with your website, post new comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content.
You can expand the WordPress built-in commenting feature with a 3rd-party plugin that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread them online.
For example, a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they like, +1, or tweet your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they are entering their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can include with their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website.)
To learn more about this plugin, visit the plugin site:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a plugin that allows you to automatically syndicate content to dozens of authority platforms, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed content automatically to dozens of social sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to many online sites, including:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Kippt, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, 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 where we explore several social media monitoring tools and technologies that are worth checking out and knowing about. More information:
The above are just some examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating and sharing 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 Blueprint: Automated Content Distribution Process – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site and plugins expertly configured and fully set up, all you then have to do to automatically attract web traffic is publish fresh content regularly.
We have created an entire email email-based training course designed to help you come up with unlimited content for posting to your site:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as you can. This step is addressed in the next article in our WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read the rest of this article series, click on the link below:
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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