Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to create an automated traffic generating machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part 1, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to drive more web traffic is add web content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, 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 things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing website was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we focus on important configuration decisions.
Here, we configure all the settings that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure all the settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part 4, we will show you how to set up various WordPress plugins that can bring new traffic automatically to your site.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate The Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which marketing expert you get your advice from, you could find yourself trying to spend a couple of hours or more each day posting content on social media.
Many small business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to employ the services of a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise. If you spend hours checking Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter in addition to writing content for your website or blog, how will you get anything in your business done?
(Small businesses spend most of their time just keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: NFIB)
Many business owners spend most of their time trying to keep their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
Research done by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent six or more hours each week on social media (the other half of businesses surveyed that used 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 research was done today, the figures would most likely be significantly 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 consumed the most time online.
(Businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time promoting and marketing themselves online in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to focus their time on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budgets, time, and resources and many areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. These sites often will make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without prior warning. Why invest so much time and effort building content on someone else’s real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can have complete control of your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Automating processes to leverage time and increase productivity is not 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 business managers, especially for those with limited time, resources, and budget. For example:
- Which channels should you focus more time, efforts, and your budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not own (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring the benefits of building content on your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Web Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula for automating the web traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this method, 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 channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more time, budget, and your efforts on,
- Invest most of your time building your own asset instead of someone else’s 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 strongly recommend avoiding black hat techniques, solutions, sites, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of sites like Pinterest, Facebook, Google.
(Web traffic automation does not have to involve the use of black hat methods!)
The purpose of this article is to show you how to be smart with your 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
We’ve just seen that most small business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different services one at a time can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not opt for a smarter, time-saving strategy 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 once, and automate the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media sites and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress website as described in Part Two. Then, configure it as shown in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you can then connect all of the dots with plugins like the ones shown 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 look now at a number of WordPress plugins that can be used to:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically via RSS to other web properties
Jetpack by WordPress.com
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, GooglePlus 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 loads of useful functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part 3 …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack – Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts automatically on several social networks.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings displays in the Publish section.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically get shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they will be automatically syndicated online.)
Visit the plugin website to learn more about this plugin: Jetpack Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting function that lets your blog readers engage with your website, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content.
You can expand the WordPress built-in commenting feature using a 3rd-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates your comments with social media, helping to spread and share them around.
For example, a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they plus1, like, or tweet your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they type their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can include at the bottom of their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv Premium version can attract more comments and traffic and improve user engagement on your web site.)
To learn more about using this WordPress plugin, go here:
Social Link Machine
(Social Link Machine – Content distribution plugin for WordPress)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that lets you automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to many social platforms, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – drip-feed content to dozens of traffic-generating platforms)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to over 30 social websites, such as:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Linkagogo, Plurk, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
Visit this website to learn more about this great plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get actionable information about your content distribution efforts), we have written a detailed article listing a number of social media monitoring tools and technologies that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns. To learn more, 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: Content Distribution Stage – Summary
Once your website and plugins have been expertly configured and set up, all you need to do is post new content regularly to automatically attract new traffic organically.
If you need endless ideas for content that you can post on your website or blog, we recommend subscribing to our email training series here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is covered in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read the rest of this article series, click here:
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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