Welcome to Part Four of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your website into an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part One of this series, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to bring traffic is add content on a consistent basis!)
In Part 2, we look at the setup phase of the blueprint. We explain the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing website is built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part Three, we discuss the configuration phase of the automation system.
Here, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you will configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part 4, we explain how to set up various WordPress plugins that can help get web traffic automatically to your website.
Why Automate Your Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on which marketing guru you listen to, you could find yourself trying to spend a couple of hours per day (or more) promoting your business on social media.
Most small businesses lack the time, human resources and financial means to employ the services of a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts recommend doing. If you are spending most of your time posting updates on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter in addition to researching and writing articles for your blog or website, how can anything else in your business get done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small business owners spend their time. Infographic: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many business owners 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 conducted by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent at least 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 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 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.
(Businesses are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budget, time, and resources 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 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 StumbleUpon. These companies can make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building content on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can control your own real estate and post your content automatically to other sites.
Automating processes to save time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the availability of hundreds of new channels for promoting and marketing a business online creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited resources, marketing budgets, and time. For example:
- Which marketing channels should you focus more of your time, efforts, and budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not own (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on your own domain?
- 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 share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula for automating the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this strategy, 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 marketing channels you should invest more of your efforts, time, and your 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 urge that you stay away from all black hat solutions, strategies, sites, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of sites like Google, Facebook, Pinterest, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t have to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this article series is not to game web services or bypass 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 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 in the previous section that 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 to be strategic and work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of posting content to each different marketing channel, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different services one at a time is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not opt for 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 your content distribution to all other services.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social services 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress site as shown in Part 2. Then, get it all configured as explained in Part 3. After all this is in place, you then connect all of the dots with plugins like the ones discussed in the section below.
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 brief look at a few plugins that can help to:
- Post content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content via RSS feeds to other websites
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 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 the WordPress.com account set up in Part 3 …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Publicize your content automatically to various social media sites.)
After configuring all of the account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings show in your Publish section.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they are automatically syndicated online.)
To learn more about using this great plugin, go here: Jetpack WordPress Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress commenting function allows your blog readers to engage with your website, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions as part of an online community.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature with a 3rd-party plugin that integrates with social media, helping to spread and share your content online.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they like, plus1, or tweet your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they enter their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can 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 web site.)
To learn more about the benefits of this plugin, visit the plugin website:
Social LinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin that allows you to automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to dozens of online platforms, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate content automatically to many traffic-generating sites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to over 30 online platforms, including:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Kippt, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
Visit this website for more information about this plugin: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get useful information about your content marketing efforts), we have created a comprehensive article listing many social media tracking 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 Automation Blueprint: Content Sharing Stage – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been configured and fully set up, all you need to do to drive traffic is publish great content regularly.
We have created an entire email email-based training course designed to help you never run out of great content ideas for your website:
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 covered in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read the rest of this article, click here:
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