Welcome to Part Four of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to drive visitors automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part One, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to attract more traffic is add great content consistently!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a website 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 how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we focused on important configuration decisions.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part 4, we explain how to set up various plugins that can drive new traffic automatically to your website or blog.
Why Automating The Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on which expert you listen to, you could find yourself investing a couple of hours per day (or more) promoting your business on social media while also managing your business, your content and your web presence.
Most businesses lack the time, human resources and financial means to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts recommend doing. If you spent half a day checking Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook in addition to planning and writing articles for your blog or website, how would anything in your business ever get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: NFIB)
Small business owners 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.
A study of small businesses done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent at least 6 hours each 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 even higher.
- More than half of all small businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more creating a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media consumed the most time online.
(Businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend more time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited time, marketing budgets, and resources and many areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or StumbleUpon. These sites can and will make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without prior notification. Why invest so much time and effort building content on someone else’s real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other online properties.
Automating systems and process to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the availability of hundreds of new channels for marketing and promoting a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited time, resources, and budget. For example:
- Which marketing channels should you focus more of your budget, efforts, and your time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not own (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Web Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that allows you to automate your web traffic generation 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 web marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more budget, time, and efforts on,
- Invest most of your time 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 recommend avoiding black hat websites, solutions, strategies, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of services like Facebook, Google, Pinterest, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not need to involve using black hat methods!)
What we are focusing here is to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and increase your exposure online to websites 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 are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited time, budget, and resources.
So, instead of posting content to each service, which can be very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels is 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 the distribution of your content to all other services.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media services and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content 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 get all this done?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress site as described in Part Two. Then, configure your site settings as explained in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you can then automate various processes using plugins such as 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 look now at some examples of plugins that can be used to:
- Syndicate content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content via RSS feeds to other blogs
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn and more as soon as you publish new content using a WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with loads of useful features.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part 3 …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Share your posts on various social accounts.)
After all of the settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize options displays in the post publishing area.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically be shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they are automatically distributed online.)
To learn more about this plugin, go here: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress commenting function lets your visitors interact with your website, post new comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content as part of a community.
You can expand the WordPress built-in commenting feature using 3rd-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share your content online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can create more user engagement on your website or blog. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like search-indexable backlinks, social enticements for sharing your content, the ability to add twitter usernames to comments, and ability to use keywords in the user name. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they type their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can include with their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can help attract more comments and improve user engagement on your website.)
Visit the plugin site for more information about the benefits of using this plugin:
Social Link Machine
(Social LinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that allows you to drip-feed content, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – drip-feed content to over 30 traffic-generating sites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to over 30 traffic-generating platforms, including:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Kippt, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
Visit the plugin site to learn more about this powerful plugin: 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 efforts), we have written a detailed article on social media monitoring tools that are worth knowing about. For more info, see this article:
The above are just some examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating and sharing 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 your site and plugins have been fully set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do is add new content regularly to automatically begin attracting more traffic organically.
If you need help coming up with topics for posting content on your site, then subscribe to our FREE email training series on growing your business with content marketing here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as you can. This step is covered in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read more, click on the link below:
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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