Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to drive traffic automatically to your website using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part 1, we provided an overview of the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to automatically begin attracting more web traffic is add fresh content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part 3, we looked at important configuration decisions.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you will configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this section of the article series, we explain how to set up various plugins that can drive traffic automatically to your site simply by publishing content.
Why Automating The Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on which business marketing experts you listen to, you could end up spending an hour or two (or more) every day posting content on social media, as well as managing your business, your content and your online presence.
Many business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are advising. If you are spending hours checking Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn in addition to writing articles for your blog or website, how does anything else in your business get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain 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 small 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 use 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 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.
(Businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend more time promoting and marketing themselves online in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to prioritize their time on other equally important areas …
(Businesses with limited budgets, time, and resources and many different business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on a number of social media sites, 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 companies can make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without prior warning. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Investing in business automation to leverage 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 exponential growth channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited resources, time, and marketing budget. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels should you focus more of your time, efforts, and your budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you ultimately have no control over (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring the benefits of building content on your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic Generation With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula for automating your traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which 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 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 sites, methods, solutions, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of companies like Pinterest, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t have to involve the use of black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this series of articles is not to manipulate online services or flaunt their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can 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 most business owners lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to individual channels can be very time-consuming!)
Why not choose this one 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 once, and automate the distribution of your content to all other services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social services and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content automatically to other blogs and online 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 this done?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress website or blog as explained in Part Two. Then, expertly configure things as shown in Part 3. After all this is in place, you can then automate your content distribution with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at some examples of traffic-generation WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Post content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content via RSS feeds to other online properties
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn 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 features.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Connect Jetpack 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, Tumblr, Twitter, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your content automatically on various social media sites.)
After all account and plugin settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details displayed in your Publish box.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically be shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your posts are automatically distributed online.)
To learn more about the benefits of this plugin, go here: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress built-in commenting feature lets your site users interact with your site, post new comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content as part of a social community.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature with a third-party plugin that integrates your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content online.
For example, using a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they plus1, like, or tweet your post. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they are typing their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included at the bottom of their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website.)
Visit this website to learn more about this plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that allows you to automatically syndicate and drip-feed content, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate your content automatically to many social platforms)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to over 30 traffic-generating sites, including:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Folkd, Plurk, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Rebel Mouse, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
Go here to learn more about this powerful plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get useful information about your content marketing campaigns), or if you want to learn more about social media monitoring tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives, see this article:
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: Content Sharing Process – Summary
Once you have your website or blog and plugins set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do is add fresh content on a consistent basis to begin attracting new web traffic organically.
We have created a complete email training series aimed at helping you come up with unlimited content for your website:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is addressed in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Section 4
To continue reading this article, click on the link below:
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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