Welcome to Part Four of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your site into an automated web traffic machine using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part 1, 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 is add content on a consistent basis to begin bringing more traffic!)
In Part 2, we focus on critical setup decisions. We explain 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 website is built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we discussed the configuration phase.
Here, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this section of the article series, we will look at ways to automate traffic to your website using various plugins.
Why Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on which experts you talk to, you could find yourself trying to spend an hour or two every day (or more) promoting your business on social media while also trying to manage your business, your content and your web presence.
Most business owners lack the time, resources and financial means to employ the services of a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are advising. If you spend all of your time checking Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing content for your website or blog, how can anything else in your business get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their time just keeping their businesses up and running. Source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many businesses spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
Research conducted in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent around 6 hours per week on social media (most of the other businesses surveyed that used social media spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was done today, the numbers would probably be even 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.
(Businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse.com)
As small 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 of a squeeze on businesses to focus their time on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budget, time, and resources and many different business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social media websites, 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 impact your business without prior warning. Why invest so much effort and time building content on someone else’s real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Automating business systems and processes to leverage time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth channels for marketing and promoting a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited resources, budgets, and time. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels should you invest more of your time, budget, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you ultimately have no control over (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Web Traffic Generation With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that lets you automate your traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this method, 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 invest more of your time, efforts, and budget on,
- Invest most of your 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 recommend avoiding black hat methods, sites, solutions, and anything designed to “game” or violate the terms of service and policies of sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Google.
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t require the use of black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this series of articles is not to manipulate online 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 get additional exposure online from sites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that most small business owners lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(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 services and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content 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 everything as explained in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you can then automate the process with plugins such as the ones discussed in the following section.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic System – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at some examples of traffic-generating WordPress plugins that can be used to:
- Post content to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content to other websites via RSS feeds
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+ and more as soon as you publish new content using a plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many great features.
After installing Jetpack, 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 plugin – Publicize)
You can share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Share your posts automatically on various social sites.)
After all plugin and account settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings displays in your post publishing box.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it will be automatically distributed online.)
Visit the plugin site for more details about this plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting system that lets your visitors engage with your website or blog, post comments, reply to other users and engage with your content.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature using a third-party plugin that integrates 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 website. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like the ability to add twitter handles to comments, search-indexable backlinks, using keywords in the username, and social enticements for content-sharing. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they enter their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included at the bottom of their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv Pro version can help attract more comments and improve user engagement on your website.)
Go here to learn more about this great plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that allows you to drip-feed your content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – drip-feed content automatically to dozens of social platforms)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to over 30 social sites, including:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Plurk, Reddit, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
Go here for more details about this plugin: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get useful information about your content marketing campaigns), we have written a detailed article on social media monitoring tools that are worth checking out and knowing about. To learn more, go here:
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 fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do is post new content regularly to automatically attract web traffic.
We have created a complete email course aimed at helping you come up with limitless content ideas for posting to your website or blog:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. 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, click on the link below:
***
"Learning WordPress has been a huge stumbling block for me. I've been looking for something that covers absolutely everything but doesn't cost an arm and a leg. Thank you so much ... you have just provided me with what I have been looking for! Truly appreciated!" - Tanya
***