Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic machine using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part One, we provide an overview of the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to automatically start generating new traffic is post fresh content on a regular basis!)
In Part Two, we look at the setup phase of the automation process. 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 site was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In Part Three, we focused on important configuration decisions.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three 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 look at ways to automate the traffic system with WordPress plugins.
Why Automating The Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on which online marketing expert you talk to, you could find yourself spending a couple of hours or more per day promoting your business on social media.
Most business owners simply 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 advise doing. If you were to spend half a day checking LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter in addition to planning and writing articles for your website or blog, how would anything else in your business get done?
(Keeping their business up and running is how most small businesses spend their time. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their working hours simply keeping 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.
Research done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent around six 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 figures would most likely be significantly higher.
- More than half of all small businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more to create a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media was the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Small businesses are spending more time marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend more time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to prioritize their time on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budgets, resources, and time and many areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another 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 have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These companies can make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can have complete control of your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other websites.
Automating systems and process to leverage time is not new. Businesses have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited budget, time, and resources. For example:
- Which channels should you invest more efforts, budget, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, 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 The Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method for automating the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more efforts, time, and budget 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 recommend avoiding black hat websites, software, methods, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the terms of service and policies of services like Pinterest, Facebook, Google.
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t have to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
The focus of this article is to show you how to be smart with your limited resources and automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and marketing 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 most businesses lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of posting content to different marketing channels one by one, which can be very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels can be very time-consuming!)
Why not choose 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 your content distribution to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media channels and social 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as explained in Part Two. Then, expertly configure it as described in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then automate these processes using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic System – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a few plugins that can be used to:
- Distribute content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically to other sites via RSS feeds
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, 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 useful functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (set up in Part Three.) …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Publicize your content automatically to various social accounts.)
After all account and plugin settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details appear in your Publish area.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it is automatically shared online.)
Jetpack provides an automated and hands-free way to create more exposure for your content online on social media websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting function that lets your site users interact with your web site, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature using a number of third-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to share and spread your content around.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they +1, tweet, or like your content. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they are typing their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can choose to include with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your web site.)
To learn more about this plugin, go here:
Social LinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a plugin for WordPress that lets you automatically drip-feed content, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate your content automatically to over 30 traffic-generating platforms)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to dozens of online platforms, like:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Kippt, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Rebel Mouse, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
Visit this site to learn more about the benefits of this plugin: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get actionable information about your content distribution campaigns), we have created a comprehensive article where we explore over 30 social media measurement tools that will help you identify new business opportunities, track competitor activity, see what online conversations are taking place that can 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 Blueprint: Content Syndication Stage – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site and plugins expertly configured and fully set up, all you then have to do to automatically begin attracting new web traffic is post web content on a consistent basis.
If you need great topics for content that you can post on your web site, then subscribe to our email training series on growing your business online with content marketing here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is addressed in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part 4
To read more, click here:
***
"Your training is the best in the world! It is simple, yet detailed, direct, understandable, memorable, and complete." Andrea Adams, FinancialJourney.org
***