Welcome to Part Four of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to create an automated web traffic generation machine using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part 1 of this article series, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to automatically begin bringing web traffic is post new content consistently!)
In Part Two, we looked at critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to get started 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 was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we look at configuring WordPress.
Here, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure all the settings that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, we explain how to set up various WordPress plugins that can help drive new traffic automatically to your site simply by publishing new content on a regular basis.
Why Automating The Traffic Generation Makes Sense
Depending on which marketing experts you listen to, you could end up trying to spend 1-2 hours or more per day promoting your business on social media.
Most businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are recommending. If you were to spend all of your time checking Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter in addition to planning and writing content for your website or blog, how would anything in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Source: NFIB)
Small businesses spend most of their time trying to keep 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:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent around six hours each 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 figures would most likely be even higher.
- More than half of all small 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.
(Businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time marketing and promoting themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to focus their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and budget and many areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time 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 YouTube. These companies can make decisions that affect your business without prior notification. Why invest so much time and effort building content on someone else’s 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 sites.
Automating business processes to leverage time is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the availability of hundreds of new channels for promoting and marketing a business creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited resources, budget, and time. For example:
- Which of these channels do you focus more of your efforts, time, and your budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method for automating 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 web marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should focus more time, budget, and your efforts on,
- Invest most of your time and 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 techniques, websites, tools, and anything designed to “game” or violate the terms of service and policies of sites like Facebook, Pinterest, Google, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not have to involve using black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this article series is not to game 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
We’ve just seen that many businesses lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to services individually is 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 content one-time, and automate the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social services and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) 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 website or blog as shown in Part 2. Then, expertly configure things as shown in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then automate your content distribution using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at some plugins that can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content via RSS feeds to other sites
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and more as soon as you publish your content using a WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many great features.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack – Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts on various social media sites.)
After configuring all of the plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details displays in your publishing section.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new content is automatically syndicated online.)
Visit this site for more details about using this great plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting function allows your visitors to interact with your web site, post comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions as part of a community.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature using a 3rd-party commenting plugin that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread them online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can improve user engagement on your site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like SEO backlinks, social enticements for content-sharing, ability to use keywords in the username, and adding twitter usernames to comments. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they enter their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can choose to include at the bottom of their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv Premium 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:
Social LinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social Link Machine is a plugin that allows you to syndicate content to dozens of authority websites, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed content to dozens of online platforms)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to many online websites, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Folkd, Plurk, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Sett, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
Go here for more details about the benefits of this handy plugin: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get actionable information about your content distribution campaigns), or if you want to learn more about social media monitoring tools that you may want to check out, see this article:
The above are just some examples of the many content distribution plugins that are available to WordPress users.
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 Distribution Stage – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site and plugins set up and expertly configured, all you have to do is publish fresh content consistently to automatically attract new web traffic.
We have created a complete email series aimed at helping you come up with unlimited content ideas for your website:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is covered in the next article in our WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section 4
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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