Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to create an automated traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part One of this article series, we provide an overview of the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to automatically start generating more traffic is post content consistently!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase. We explained the best way to start 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 site was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we focused on important configuration decisions.
Here, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you will configure all the settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section, we will look at ways to automate traffic to your website using a number of plugins.
Why Automating The Traffic Generation Makes Sense
Depending on which expert you get your advice from, you could end up trying to spend an hour or two (or more) per day posting content on social media.
Most business owners simply lack the time, human resources and budget to run a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts recommend doing. If you are spending most of your time posting updates on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter in addition to writing articles for your blog or website, how will you get anything in your business done?
(Keeping a business running is how most small businesses spend their time. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many businesses spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses done by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent around six hours each 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 survey was conducted today, the figures would most likely be significantly 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 consumed the most time online.
(Small businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small 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 areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and budgets and many areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on various social sites, 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 dramatically affect your business without 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 online accounts.
Automating business processes to leverage time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the availability of many new channels for marketing and promoting a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited resources, budget, and time. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels do you invest more efforts, budget, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that do not belong to you (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on 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 Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that lets you automate your web traffic generation with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should focus more efforts, budget, and time 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 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 urge you to avoid using black hat websites, methods, tools, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of companies like LinkedIn, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t require using black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this article series is not to manipulate web services or flaunt their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing 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 businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, time, and resources.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to individual channels can be very time-consuming!)
Why not use a smarter, time-saving approach like 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 marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media channels and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) to other blogs and online 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, get it configured as explained in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then automate the process using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some WordPress plugins that can be used to:
- Post content to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically via RSS feeds to other sites
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn 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 useful features.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack – Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your content automatically on various social media accounts.)
After configuring all of the plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings appear in your post publishing area.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically be shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it will be automatically shared online.)
For more information about the benefits of using this handy plugin, go here: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting system that lets your site users interact with your web site, post new comments, reply to other users and engage with your content.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature using 3rd-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them online.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can create more user engagement on your web site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like social enticements for sharing content, search-indexable backlinks, the ability to add twitter usernames to comments, and ability to use keywords in the username. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they are entering their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can choose to include with their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your site.)
Visit the plugin website for more information about the benefits of using this plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a WordPress plugin that lets you automatically syndicate content, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed content to over 30 online websites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to dozens of traffic-generating websites, such as:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Folkd, Plurk, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
To learn more about using this handy plugin, go here: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get actionable information about your content distribution campaigns), we have written a comprehensive article about social media measurement tools that you may want to check out. For more info, see this article:
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 Blueprint: Automated Content Sharing Phase – Summary
Once your site and plugins have been set up and expertly configured, all you have to do is publish web content regularly to automatically drive traffic organically.
We have created a complete email training series designed to help you come up with limitless content for posting to your website or blog:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is addressed in the next article in our WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Four
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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