Welcome to Part Four of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is add fresh content regularly to start driving traffic!)
In Part 2, we look at the setup phase. We explain the best way to get started 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 website is built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we focused on important configuration decisions.
Here, we configure all the settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you will configure all the settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section, we will show you how to set up various plugins that can help drive visitors automatically to your website or blog.
Why Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on which online marketing experts you listen to, you could end up investing a couple of hours per day (or more) promoting your business on social media in addition to trying to run your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Most small business owners 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 are advising. If you are spending hours posting updates on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing articles for your website or blog, how will you get anything in your business done?
(Keeping a business running is how most small businesses spend their time. Infographic: NFIB)
Small business owners 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 grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses done by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent around six hours per week on social media (the other half of businesses surveyed using 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 figures 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 spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend more time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, budgets, and time and many areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on a number of social sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These companies can make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much effort and time building content on someone else’s asset? With WordPress, you can control your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other sites.
Automating business systems and processes to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increased availability of so many new channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited time, resources, and marketing budget. For example:
- Which of these channels do you invest more of your budget, efforts, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring the benefits of building content on your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating The Web Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that allows you to automate your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should invest more time, efforts, and your budget on,
- Invest most of your time 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 sites, strategies, solutions, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of sites like Google, Pinterest, 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 break their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and marketing efforts, and increase your exposure online to websites used by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, many small businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts recommend. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited time, resources, and budget.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to individual channels can be very time-consuming!)
Why not use this time-saving approach 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 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
- 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 get all this done?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as described in Part Two. Then, get it configured as shown in Part 3. 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 brief look at some traffic-generating WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Distribute content to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically to other blogs via RSS feeds
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, 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 many great features.
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 the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts on various social networks.)
After all settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account details show in your publishing section.)
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 posts are published, they are automatically syndicated online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides a hands-free way to get more exposure for your content online on social sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress built-in commenting feature lets your visitors engage with your site, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content as part of an online community.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature using a number of 3rd-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content online.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your website or blog. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like ability to use keywords in the user name, social enticements for sharing content, SEO backlinks, and adding twitter names to comments. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they are typing their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included with their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv can attract more comments and create more user engagement on your web site.)
To learn more about the benefits of this great plugin, visit the plugin site:
Social LinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a plugin that lets you drip-feed content, build backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed content to many social websites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to many social platforms, including:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Folkd, Kippt, Reddit, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
Visit this site to learn more about the benefits of using this handy plugin: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get actionable information about your content distribution efforts), we have created a detailed article where we explore a number of social media tracking tools and technologies that will help you identify new trends and opportunities, track competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that could affect your business,etc. More information:
The above are just a few examples of the many content distribution plugins that WordPress makes available.
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 Phase – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do is publish fresh content consistently to automatically begin bringing traffic organically.
If you need help coming up with great topics for posting content on your website, then subscribe to our FREE email training course on content marketing here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is explained in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Four
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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