Welcome to Part Four of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to drive new visitors automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part 1, we provided an overview of the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is add content on a consistent basis to automatically begin bringing more web traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence 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 how to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part Three, we look at the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you will configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section of the article series, we look at ways to automate traffic to your website using a number of WordPress plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate The Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which online marketing gurus you talk to, you could end up spending 1-2 hours or more per day promoting your business on social media while also running your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Many small businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are recommending. If you spend half your day posting updates on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook in addition to planning and writing articles for your website or blog, how will you get anything in your business done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time just keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their working hours trying to keep their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent six or more 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 use of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was done today, the numbers would most likely be 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.
(Small businesses spend more time each 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 puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to focus their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and budget and many different areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another thing to consider 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 have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. These sites can and will make decisions that can significantly 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 control your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other websites.
Investing in business automation to save time is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increasing availability of so many new channels for promoting and marketing a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited resources, time, and marketing budget. For example:
- Which of these channels do you focus more of your time, efforts, and your budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, 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 we’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 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, budget, and your time on,
- Invest most of your 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 strongly urge that you stay away from all black hat sites, methods, solutions, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of companies like YouTube, Facebook, Google.
(Web traffic automation doesn’t have to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
The purpose 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 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
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, most small business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to different marketing channels can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose a smarter, time-saving approach like the one shown below 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 services and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content 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 WordPress website or blog as shown in Part Two. Then, get everything configured as explained in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you can then automate these processes with plugins like the ones discussed below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a number of traffic-generation plugins that can be used to:
- Distribute content to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content to other websites via RSS feeds
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+ and more as soon as you publish your content using a WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many useful functions.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part 3 …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack – Publicize feature)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your content on several social media sites.)
After configuring all of the account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details displays in the Publish area.)
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 you publish, your posts are automatically syndicated online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides you with an automated and hands-free way to get more exposure for your content online on social media websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting system that allows your site users to engage with your site, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature using third-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content around.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help attract more comments and improve user engagement on your site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like backlinks, ability to use keywords in the name, the ability to add twitter usernames to comments, and social enticements for sharing your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they type their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included below their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your web site.)
To learn more about using this plugin, visit the plugin site:
Social Link Machine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a plugin for WordPress that allows you to automatically syndicate content, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – drip-feed content automatically to dozens of online platforms)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to many authority websites, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Linkagogo, Kippt, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blogger, Overblog, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
Visit this site to learn more about the benefits of using this powerful plugin: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get actionable information about your content marketing efforts), we have created a comprehensive article listing a number of social media tracking tools and technologies that will help you identify new business opportunities, track competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that affect your business,etc. For more information, go here:
The above are just some examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating and syndicating 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 Sharing Stage – Summary
Once you have your website or blog and plugins expertly configured and set up, all you then need to do is add great content on a consistent basis to automatically start driving web traffic.
If you need endless content ideas for your website, then subscribe to our FREE email training series 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 section of the WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Four
To keep reading, click here:
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