Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to create an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part 1, we describe the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is add new content on a consistent basis to start driving web traffic!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase. We explained 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 site was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In Part Three, we discussed the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure all the settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure all the settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this article, we will show you how to set up various WordPress plugins that can drive new visitors automatically to your site.
Why Automate The Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which marketing experts you listen to, you could find yourself trying to spend an hour or two per day (or more) posting content on social media while also managing your business, your content and your online presence.
Most small business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are prescribing. If you were to spend all of your time checking LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook in addition to researching and writing content for your blog or website, how would anything else in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: 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 stay competitive and make sales in order to survive.
Research done in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent six or more hours per 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 usage of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was done today, the figures would probably 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 their most time-consuming online activity.
(Small businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time marketing and promoting themselves online in order to compete and survive, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other equally important areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and marketing budget and many areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on a number of social websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These companies often will make decisions that can significantly affect your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building content on someone else’s asset? With WordPress, you can control your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other sites.
Automating business processes to save time is not new. Businesses have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increased availability of so many new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited resources, marketing budget, and time. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you invest more budget, efforts, and your time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not control (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting 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-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that allows you to automate your traffic generation with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more of your budget, time, 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 urge you to avoid using black hat websites, strategies, software, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of services like Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t need to involve the use of black hat methods!)
The focus of this series of articles is to show you how to 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
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, most small business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of posting content to different marketing channels, which is extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to individual channels can be very time-consuming!)
Why not choose this one 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 the distribution of your content to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media sites and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) automatically to other blogs and web 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as described in Part Two. Then, configure everything as shown in Part Three. After all this is in place, you can 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 Web Traffic Blueprint – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a few WordPress plugins that can help:
- Syndicate content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically to other websites via RSS
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, LinkedIn and more as soon as you publish your content using a WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many useful functions.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part 3 …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Share your posts automatically on several social media sites.)
After all of the account and plugin settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account options displays in your Publish area.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it is automatically shared online.)
This is a hands-free way to get more exposure online for your content on social media networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting system that lets your site users engage with your website, post comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature using a 3rd-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates your comments with social media, helping to spread and share your content around.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like backlinks, ability to use keywords in the user name, social enticements for sharing content, and adding twitter names to comments. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included with their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your web site.)
To learn more about the benefits of this plugin, visit the plugin site:
Social LinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin that lets you automatically syndicate your content to dozens of authority websites, build backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and create second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – drip-feed content automatically to many online sites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to dozens of social platforms, including:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Diigo, Instapaper, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Overblog, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
Go here to learn more about the benefits of this plugin: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get actionable information about your content distribution campaigns), we have written a comprehensive article on social media monitoring tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns. Go here to learn more about this:
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 Blueprint: Content Sharing Stage – Summary
Once you have your site and plugins set up and expertly configured, all you need to do to automatically begin bringing more traffic is publish great content on a consistent basis.
We have created an entire email course designed to help you never run out of 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 section of the WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Part 4
To read more, 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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