Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part 1, we explain 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 is add fresh content consistently to attract new traffic!)
In Part Two, we focused on 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 with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part Three, we discussed the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this section, we will show you how to set up various plugins that can get traffic automatically to your site as you begin posting web content regularly.
Why You Should Consider Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which marketing gurus you get your advice from, you could end up trying to spend a couple of hours or more every day promoting your business on social media in addition to running your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Many businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are advising. If you spend half your day posting updates on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter in addition to researching and writing content for your website or blog, how can anything else in your business get done?
(Keeping a business running is how most small business owners spend their working hours. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners 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 grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses done by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent 6 or more hours each 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 was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was conducted today, the figures would most likely be even 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. Image source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time promoting and marketing themselves online in order to compete and survive, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and marketing budgets and many different 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 promoting and marketing your business on a number of social media websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. These companies can make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without prior warning. Why invest so much time and effort building content on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other online properties.
Automating business systems and processes to save time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increasing availability of so many new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited resources, marketing budgets, and time. For example:
- Which channels do you focus more of your budget, time, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring 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 we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that allows you to automate your traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this formula, 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 costs,
- Determine which channels you should focus more budget, time, 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 recommend staying away from all black hat websites, solutions, strategies, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of companies like LinkedIn, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not have to involve using black hat methods!)
What we are focusing here is not to game online services or flaunt their terms of service, but to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and increase your exposure online to websites frequented 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 business owners lack the time, human 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 resources, budget, and time.
So, instead of using this time-consuming approach …
(Posting content to individual channels can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not do 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 once, and automate your content distribution to all other services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social sites and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) to other blogs and online 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 of this done?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress website or blog as explained in Part 2. Then, get everything configured as shown in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you then connect all of the dots using plugins like the ones listed 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 Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at a few WordPress plugins that can:
- Syndicate content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically to other websites via RSS feeds
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus 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 features.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Publicize your posts to various social media sites.)
After configuring all 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 post publishing section.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically get shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they are automatically shared online.)
This is a hands-free, automated way to create more exposure for your content online on social networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting system that allows your blog readers to engage with your website or blog, post new comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature with 3rd-party commenting plugins that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can create more user engagement on your website. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like social enticements for sharing content, search-indexable backlinks, the ability to add twitter names to comments, and ability to use keywords in the user name. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they enter their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included at the bottom of their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website.)
Visit the plugin site to learn more about the benefits of this great plugin:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – Content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social Link Machine is a plugin that lets you syndicate and drip-feed content to dozens of authority platforms, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate and drip-feed content to over 30 traffic-generating websites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to dozens of authority platforms, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Delicious, Linkagogo, Kippt, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
For more details about using this powerful plugin, go here: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get actionable information about your content marketing campaigns), we have written a detailed article on social media measurement tools that are worth knowing about. Go here to learn more:
The above are just a few examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating 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 System: Automated Content Syndication Phase – Summary
Once you have your website or blog and plugins set up and configured, all you need to do then is publish web content consistently to attract more web traffic organically.
If you need endless content ideas for your web site, then subscribe to our email training series on content marketing here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as can be improved. This step is explained in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
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