Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive visitors automatically to your website using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part One of this series, we provide an overview of the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to automatically generate traffic is add fresh content on a regular basis!)
In Part Two, we look at the setup phase of this system. We explain the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing site is built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we look at the configuration phase.
Here, we configure all the settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 we show you 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 look at ways to automate the traffic system with different WordPress plugins.
Why Automate Your Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on who you get your advice from, you could find yourself trying to spend an hour or two (or more) every day promoting your business on social media in addition to trying to manage your business, your content and your online presence.
Most small businesses simply lack the time, human resources and budget 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 are prescribing. If you spend most of your time posting updates on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook in addition to researching and writing content for your website or blog, how will you get anything in your business done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and make sales in order to survive.
A study of small businesses done in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent 6 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 conducted 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 the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Small businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time promoting and marketing themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to prioritize their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budgets, resources, and time and many different 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 promoting and marketing your business on a number of social websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. These sites can make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without prior notification. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other online accounts.
Automating business processes to leverage time is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited budgets, resources, and time. For example:
- Which channels do you invest more of your efforts, budget, and your time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula for automating your traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this method, 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 of your time, budget, and efforts 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 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 methods, sites, software, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the policies and terms of service of companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not need to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this series of articles is not to game web services or bypass their terms of service, but to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from 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, many business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to marketing channels one at a time is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose this method 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 channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media services and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) automatically to other blogs and online 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 site as described in Part 2. Then, configure things as explained in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then connect all of the dots with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a few plugins that can be used to:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically via RSS feeds to other online properties
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and more as soon as you publish your 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 the WordPress.com account you set up in Part Three …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
You can share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your posts automatically to various social networks.)
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 settings show in the Publish section.)
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 new posts will be automatically distributed online.)
Jetpack provides you with an automated and hands-free way to get more exposure online for your content on social media websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting function lets your site users engage with your site, post new comments, reply to other users and engage with your content as part of an online community.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature using a 3rd-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread your content online.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can improve user engagement on your site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like using keywords in the name, social enticements for content sharing, search-indexable backlinks, and the ability to add twitter usernames to comments. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they are entering their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can choose to include below their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your site.)
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, go here:
Social LinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin that allows you to syndicate and drip-feed content to over 30 online sites, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate and drip-feed your content to over 30 social sites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to many social websites, including:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Folkd, Kippt, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Rebel Mouse, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about this powerful plugin, visit the plugin website: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get actionable information about your content marketing campaigns), we have written a detailed article on social media measurement tools that will help you identify new business opportunities, track competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that could affect your business,etc. Go here to learn more:
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: Automated Content Syndication Process – Summary
Once you have your site and plugins expertly configured and set up, all you then need to do to automatically generate web traffic is publish content regularly.
We have created a complete email course designed to help you come up with endless content ideas for posting to your site:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as you can. This step is explained in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read the rest of this article series, click on the link below:
***
"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
***