Welcome to Part 4 of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to drive new visitors automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part One, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to automatically bring web traffic is publish content regularly!)
In Part 2, we focused on critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we focus on the configuration phase of this system.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you will configure all the settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, we look at ways to automate traffic generation with different plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which experts you talk to, you could end up trying to spend an hour or two every day (or more) posting content on social media.
Most small businesses 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 all of your time checking LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook in addition to writing content for your website or blog, how could you get anything else in your business done?
(Keeping their business up and running is how most small businesses spend their time. Infographic: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
Marketing research done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent at least six hours per week on social media (most of the other businesses surveyed using 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 survey was conducted today, the figures would probably 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 spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend more time marketing and promoting themselves online in order to compete and survive, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other areas …
(Businesses with limited budget, resources, and time and many different business 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 marketing and promoting your business on a number of social sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. These companies can make decisions that can significantly impact your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much effort and time building content on someone else’s asset? With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Investing in automation to save time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth online 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 neglecting 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 share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula for automating your web traffic generation with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more time, efforts, and your budget 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 urge you to avoid using black hat solutions, techniques, websites, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the policies and terms of service of sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t require the use of black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this article is to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from websites 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 businesses lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts advise. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of posting content to marketing channels one at a time, which can be extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to individual marketing channels is 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 once, and automate the distribution of your content to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social channels and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) automatically 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 website or blog as explained in Part Two. Then, get everything configured as shown in Part 3. After all this is in place, you can then automate the content distribution using 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 Web Traffic System – Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a number of traffic-generation WordPress plugins that can:
- Syndicate content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content via RSS feeds to other sites
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, 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 loads of great functions.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part Three …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack – Publicize feature)
Configure this section to share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Share your posts on various social media sites.)
After all plugin and account settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize options appear in your post publishing section.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically be shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it will be automatically syndicated online.)
Visit the plugin website to learn more about the benefits of using this plugin: Jetpack Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting function that allows your visitors to interact with your website or blog, post new comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature using third-party commenting plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they tweet, like, or +1 your post. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they are entering their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included at the bottom of their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your web site.)
To learn more about the benefits of this powerful plugin, visit the plugin site:
Social Link Machine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a WordPress plugin that allows you to syndicate and drip-feed your content, build backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and create second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed content to over 30 authority platforms)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to many authority websites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Folkd, Plurk, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
Visit the plugin site to learn more about the benefits of this plugin: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get actionable information about your content distribution campaigns), or if you want to learn more about social media tracking tools and technologies that you may want to check out, refer to this article:
The above are just a few examples of the many content distribution plugins that are available to WordPress users.
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 Blueprint: Content Distribution Process – Summary
Once your website or blog and plugins have been set up and expertly configured, all you then need to do is add web content regularly to start attracting traffic.
We have created a complete email training series designed to help you never run out of content for posting to your website:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is addressed in the next article in our WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 4
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