Welcome to Part Four of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a website into an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part 1 of this article series, we provided an overview of 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 attract more web traffic is publish web content on a regular basis!)
In Part 2, we focus on the setup phase. We help you understand the best way to start 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 existing site is built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we discuss the configuration phase of the traffic automation process.
In this step, we configure all the settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you will configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, we discuss ways to automate the traffic-getting process using various WordPress plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which experts you listen to, you could end up investing 1-2 hours every day (or more) posting content on social media.
Most small businesses simply lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts recommend doing. If you were to spend most of your time posting updates on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook in addition to researching and writing articles for your blog or website, how would anything in your business ever get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their working hours just keeping their businesses up and running. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many businesses spend most of their time just keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and make sales in order to survive.
Marketing research done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent six or more hours per week on social media (the rest 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 numbers would most likely 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 consumed the most time online.
(Businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend more time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited time, marketing budget, and resources and many different areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on a number of social websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. These sites can and will make decisions that affect your business without consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building content on someone else’s real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other online accounts.
Automating systems and process to save time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increased availability of hundreds of new channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited time, marketing budgets, and resources. For example:
- Which of these 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, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring your own website?
- 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 show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy for automating your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, 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 channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more efforts, budget, and time on,
- Invest most of your efforts building your own asset 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 urge you to avoid using black hat solutions, sites, methods, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the terms of service and policies of sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t have to involve the use of black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this series of articles is to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and marketing 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 businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, time, and resources.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to different channels is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose this time-saving 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 one-time, and automate the distribution of your content to all other services.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content 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 WordPress site as described in Part Two. Then, get everything configured as shown in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then automate these processes using plugins like the ones listed below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic System – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at a few WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Distribute content to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically via RSS feeds to other web properties
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn 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 many great functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part 3 …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack – Publicize feature)
Configure this section to share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your content automatically on various social sites.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account details in your publishing box.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically get shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new content is automatically distributed online.)
Jetpack provides a hands-free way to get more exposure for your content online on social media sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress built-in commenting function allows your site users to engage with your website or blog, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress built-in commenting feature using 3rd-party commenting plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments with social media, helping to spread and share your content online.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can create more user engagement on your website or blog. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like adding twitter handles to comments, social enticements for content-sharing, SEO backlinks, and ability to use keywords in the username. 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 when they click submit.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website.)
Go here to learn more about this handy plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
SocialLinkMachine is a plugin that allows you to automatically drip-feed your content, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate your content to dozens of online platforms)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to over 30 online platforms, like:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Kippt, Reddit, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Overblog, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
For more details about the benefits of this WordPress plugin, visit the plugin website: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get useful information about your content distribution efforts), go here to learn more about social media tracking tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives:
The above are just a few examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating and syndicating 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 Sharing Stage – Summary
Once you have your site and plugins set up and expertly configured, all you have to do to generate web traffic is add new content regularly.
If you need endless content ideas for your site, we recommend subscribing to our email training course on content marketing here:
Once you have 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 section of our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read more, 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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