Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to create an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part 1 of this article series, 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 web site, all you have to do is add web content on a regular basis to generate web traffic!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase. We explained 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 website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we look at the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure all the settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you will configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part 4, we will discuss ways to automate your traffic using plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic Generation
Depending on which marketing guru you listen to, you could end up spending an hour or two per day (or more) promoting your business on social media in addition to trying to run your business, creating content and managing your online presence.
Many business owners simply lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts recommend doing. If you were to spend half a day posting updates on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook in addition to planning and writing articles for your website or blog, how would you get anything else in your business done?
(Small businesses spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: NFIB)
Many business owners 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 done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent around 6 hours per week on social media (the other half 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 research was conducted today, the numbers would most likely be even 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 spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time promoting and marketing themselves online in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to focus their time on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited budget, resources, and time 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 promoting and marketing 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 Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. These sites can make decisions that affect your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on someone else’s real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can control your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other online accounts.
Investing in business automation to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth channels for marketing and promoting a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited time, resources, and marketing budget. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you focus more budget, efforts, and your time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Web Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that lets you automate the traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web 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 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 software, methods, websites, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the policies and terms of service of services like Pinterest, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t require using black hat methods!)
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 marketing efforts, and get additional exposure online from websites visited by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that many small business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts recommend. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limited time, resources, and budget.
So, instead of posting content to each different channel, which is extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels individually is very 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 services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media channels and social 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 site as shown in Part 2. Then, configure your site settings as explained in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then automate your content distribution using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some examples of plugins that can be used to:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content via RSS feeds to other web properties
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, 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 features.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part 3 …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack – Publicize)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Publicize your content to several social sites.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details in the publishing section.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically get shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new posts are automatically syndicated online.)
This is a hands-free way to create more exposure for your content online on social sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting system lets your site users engage with your web site, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature using a number of 3rd-party plugins that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content online.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they plus1, tweet, or like your content. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they are typing their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can include with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv can attract more comments and improve user engagement on your web site.)
Go here for more details about the benefits of this plugin:
Social Link Machine
(Social LinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin that allows you to automatically drip-feed your content, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed your content to over 30 authority platforms)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to dozens of traffic-generating websites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Instapaper, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
To learn more about using this handy plugin, visit this website: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get useful information about your content distribution efforts), we have written a detailed article on social media tracking tools and technologies that you may want to check out. Go here to learn more:
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 System: Automated Content Distribution Stage – Summary
Once your site and plugins have been set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then is publish content on a consistent basis to start attracting web traffic.
If you need help coming up with endless topics for posting content on your site, then subscribe to our email training series on content marketing here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as you can. This step is covered in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
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