Welcome to Part Four of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part 1, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to automatically start generating traffic is post fresh content regularly!)
In Part 2, we look at the setup phase of the automation blueprint. We help you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your site was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we discuss important configuration decisions.
In this step, we configure all the settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part 4, we will look at ways to automate traffic to your website with WordPress plugins.
Why Automating The Traffic Generation Makes Sense
Depending on which marketing guru you listen to, you could end up trying to spend 1-2 hours or more per day posting content on social media.
Most small businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to employ the services of a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts prescribe. If you are spending hours checking Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing content for your blog or website, how can anything else in your business get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their time just keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: NFIB)
Many business owners spend most of their working hours simply keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and make sales in order to survive.
Marketing research done in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all 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 use of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was done today, the numbers would probably be significantly 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 their most time-consuming online activity.
(Small businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend more time marketing and promoting themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to focus their time on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and marketing budgets and many areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social media websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or StumbleUpon. These sites can make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much time and effort building content on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other online properties.
Automating business processes to save time is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increasing availability of so many new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited time, budgets, and resources. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you focus more time, budget, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you ultimately have little to no control over (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, 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 Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that allows you to automate your traffic-getting 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 channels,
- Determine which channels you should focus more of your efforts, budget, and your time on,
- Invest most of your efforts 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 strongly urge you to avoid using black hat software, websites, methods, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the policies and terms of service of services like Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not require the use of black hat methods!)
The focus of this article is to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites visited by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen in the previous section how most small business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of using this approach …
(Posting content to individual marketing channels can be 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 marketing channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media channels and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) 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 it as explained in Part Three. After all this is in place, you can then automate your content distribution with plugins like the ones listed 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-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at some examples of WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Syndicate content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically to other sites via RSS
Jetpack by WordPress.com
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ 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 set up in Part 3 …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize feature)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Distribute your posts to various social media networks.)
After all account and plugin settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details show in the publishing area.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your content will be automatically syndicated online.)
Go here to learn more about the benefits of using this plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress native commenting feature allows your blog readers to engage with your website, post new comments, reply to other users and engage with your content.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature using a number of third-party plugins that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share your content around.
For example, 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 tweet, like, or +1 your post. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they are typing their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included at the bottom of their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv can attract more comments and web traffic and create more user engagement on your website.)
To learn more about this plugin, go here:
Social LinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that lets you syndicate your content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate your content automatically to many authority platforms)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to dozens of traffic-generating sites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Linkagogo, Instapaper, Zotero, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about the benefits of this great plugin, go here: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get useful information about your content marketing efforts), go here to learn about social media monitoring tools and technologies that will help you keep track of online trends, monitor competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that affect your business, etc, see what online conversations are taking place that can affect your business,etc:
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: Content Syndication Phase – Summary
Once you have your site and plugins fully set up and configured, all you then have to do is add new content on a consistent basis to automatically begin bringing traffic.
If you need great content ideas for your web site, then subscribe to our FREE email training series here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is addressed in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Section 4
To continue reading about this topic, click on the link below:
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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