Welcome to Part Four of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a site into an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part One of this series, we provided an overview of the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to drive traffic is add great content regularly!)
In Part 2, we discuss the setup phase of the traffic automation system. We explain the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In Part 3, we looked at the configuration phase of the blueprint.
Here, we configure all the settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 we show you how to configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this step, we discuss ways to automate traffic to your website with WordPress plugins.
Why Automating The Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on which business marketing experts you get your advice from, you could end up trying to spend an hour every day (or more) promoting your business on social media in addition to running your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Most business owners simply lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are recommending. If you spent half a day posting updates on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing articles for your website or blog, how would you get anything in your business done?
(Small businesses spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many 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 stay competitive and make sales in order to survive.
Research done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent at least six hours each 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 research was conducted today, the figures would probably be even 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 was the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Small businesses are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse.com)
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 areas …
(Businesses with limited budget, resources, and time and many business areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time 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 make decisions that impact your business without consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building content on someone else’s asset? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can have complete control of your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other sites.
Automating processes to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited marketing budget, resources, and time. For example:
- Which of these channels do you focus more of your budget, efforts, and your time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that belong to other people (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring the benefits of building content on your own website?
- 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 share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula for automating the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this strategy, 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 channels,
- Determine which channels you should invest more of your time, efforts, and budget on,
- Invest most of your time and 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 urge you to avoid using black hat sites, techniques, tools, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the policies and terms of service of sites like Google, Facebook, Pinterest, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not require using black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this article is to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites used 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 businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to different channels can be 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 once, and automate your content distribution to all other channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media services and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content automatically 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as shown in Part 2. Then, get everything configured as explained 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 – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a number of traffic-generation plugins that can:
- Syndicate content to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically to other sites via RSS
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, GooglePlus, LinkedIn 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 many great functions.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part Three …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Distribute your content automatically to various social media accounts.)
After configuring all plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings appear in your Publish area.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they are automatically distributed online.)
This is an automated and hands-free way to get more exposure for your content online on social media networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress commenting system allows your visitors to engage with your site, post comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature with 3rd-party commenting plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share them online.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can create more user engagement on your website. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like search-indexable backlinks, ability to use keywords in the name, social enticements for sharing your content, and the ability to add twitter handles to comments. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they are typing their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which can be included with their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your web site.)
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, go here:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a WordPress plugin that lets you syndicate and drip-feed content, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed content automatically to over 30 traffic-generating websites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to dozens of authority platforms, like:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Folkd, Instapaper, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
To learn more about this plugin, visit the plugin website: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get actionable information about your content marketing efforts), we have created a comprehensive article where we explore several social media measurement tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives. More information:
The above are just a few 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 Blueprint: Automated Content Sharing Phase – Summary
Once you have your website or blog and plugins fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do is post great content consistently to start generating new web traffic.
If you need endless content ideas for your website or blog, then subscribe to our email training series here:
Once you have expertly 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 series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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