Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a website into an automated web traffic generation machine using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part One, we described the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to begin bringing new traffic is add new content on a regular basis!)
In Part Two, we focus on the setup phase. We help you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website is built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we discuss the configuration phase.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 you will configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, we will discuss ways to automate the traffic-getting process with WordPress plugins.
Why Automate The Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which business marketing experts you talk to, you could find yourself spending 1-2 hours or more every day promoting your business on social media.
Most small business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts advise. If you spent hours checking Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing content for your website or blog, how could you get anything else in your business done?
(Keeping their business up and running is how most small business owners spend their time. Source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many business owners spend most of their working hours just keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
A study of small businesses done by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent at least 6 hours per week on social media (most of the other businesses surveyed that used social media spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was conducted today, the figures 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 their most time-consuming online activity.
(Small businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend more time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, budget, and time and many business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. These companies can make decisions that impact your business without prior warning. Why invest so much effort and time building content on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other online accounts.
Investing in automation to save time is not new. Businesses have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increasing availability of so many new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited time, resources, and marketing budgets. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels should you invest more budget, time, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not control (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring the benefits of building content on your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Web Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula for automating the web traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this formula, 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 online marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should focus more efforts, time, and your budget on,
- Invest most of your time building your own asset 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 recommend avoiding black hat strategies, software, sites, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of sites like Facebook, YouTube, Google, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t need to involve using black hat methods!)
The purpose of this series of articles is not to manipulate online services or bypass their terms of service, but to show you how to be smart with your limited resources and automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and increase your exposure online to sites 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 business owners lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of choosing this approach …
(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 once, and automate your content distribution to all other services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media services 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 website or blog as described in Part Two. Then, configure it as described in Part Three. After all this is in place, you can then automate these processes with plugins such as the ones discussed in the section below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a few WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Post content to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content via RSS feeds to other online properties
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, 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 functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (which you would have set up in Part 3.) …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Publicize your content to several social media accounts.)
After all of the settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account options appear in the publishing box.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your post will be automatically shared online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides a hands-free, automated way to create more exposure for your content online on social sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting function that lets your visitors interact with your website or blog, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature using third-party commenting plugins that integrate your comments with social media, helping to spread and share them online.
For example, using a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they like, tweet, or +1 your post. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they enter their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can choose to include with their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website.)
Go here to learn more about the benefits of this plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that allows you to automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to many authority websites, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate and drip-feed your content automatically to many traffic-generating platforms)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to over 30 social sites, including:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Instapaper, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
Go here to learn more about this great plugin: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get useful information about your content distribution campaigns), we have written a comprehensive article about social media monitoring tools and technologies that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns here:
The above are just a few examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating 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 System: Content Syndication Stage – Summary
Once your site and plugins have been configured and set up, all you have to do is post web content consistently to automatically bring web traffic.
If you need endless content ideas for your website or blog, we recommend subscribing to our FREE email training series on content marketing here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is covered in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Section Four
To continue reading about this topic, click here:
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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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