Welcome to Part 4 of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to drive more traffic is publish fresh content consistently!)
In Part Two, we look at the setup phase. We explain the best way to get started 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 existing site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part 3, we discuss important configuration decisions.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you will configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part 4, we will discuss ways to automate the traffic system using a number of WordPress plugins.
Why Automate Your Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on which experts you get your advice from, you could end up spending an hour or two per day (or more) promoting your business on social media.
Most business owners simply lack the time, resources and budget to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are prescribing. If you spend half your day checking Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing articles for your blog or website, how does anything else in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many businesses spend most of their time trying to keep 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.
A study of small businesses conducted in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent around six hours per week on social media (the other half of businesses surveyed using social media spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was done today, the numbers would probably be significantly 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 was the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Small businesses are spending more time marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend more time marketing and promoting themselves online in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to prioritize their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and budgets and many areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on a number of social media sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or StumbleUpon. These companies can make decisions that affect your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on someone else’s real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can control your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other online accounts.
Investing in business automation to leverage time is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information 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 of these marketing channels should you focus more of your efforts, time, and your budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that allows you to automate your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog 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 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 software, methods, websites, and anything designed to “game” or violate the policies and terms of service of sites like Twitter, Facebook, Google.
(Web traffic automation doesn’t have to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this series of articles is to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and get additional exposure online from websites visited by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that most small businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts advise. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of posting content to different channels, which can be extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to marketing channels one by one is very time-consuming!)
Why not opt for this strategy 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 your content distribution to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as explained in Part Two. Then, get it all configured as described in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you then automate the content distribution with plugins such as the ones shown in the section below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at some traffic-generating WordPress plugins that can:
- Syndicate content to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content to other online properties via RSS feeds
Jetpack Plugin
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 plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many useful features.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part 3 …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(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 several social media accounts.)
After configuring all plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details in the publishing box.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it is automatically shared online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides you with a hands-free, automated way to create more exposure online for your content on social media networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress commenting feature allows your site users to interact with your site, post new comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content as part of a community.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature using third-party plugins that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content around.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can create more user engagement on your web site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like social enticements for sharing your content, adding twitter usernames to comments, search-indexable backlinks, using keywords in the username. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they are entering their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can choose to include with their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can attract more comments and visitors and improve user engagement on your website.)
Visit the plugin site to learn more about this handy plugin:
Social Link Machine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a plugin that lets you automatically drip-feed your content to many authority platforms, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed content to dozens of traffic-generating sites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to over 30 social sites, including:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Delicious, Linkagogo, Plurk, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
Visit the plugin site for more details about the benefits of this great plugin: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get actionable information about your content distribution efforts), we have written a comprehensive article where we explore a number of social media monitoring tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives. Go here for more details:
The above are just a few 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 Automation System: Content Syndication Stage – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then is post fresh content consistently to begin attracting web traffic organically.
We have created an entire email course aimed at helping you never run out of great content ideas for your website or blog:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as you can. This step is explained in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Section Four
To keep reading, click here:
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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