Welcome to Part Four of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive visitors automatically to your website using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part 1, we describe the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is post web content regularly to automatically bring more web traffic!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing site was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In Part Three, we discussed configuring the system.
Here, we configure all the settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you will configure all the settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part 4, we explain how to set up various WordPress plugins that can help bring new visitors automatically to your site when you begin posting new content.
Why Automate The Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on which marketing expert you talk to, you could end up trying to spend an hour or two every day (or more) posting content on social media.
Most businesses lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are recommending. If you are spending hours checking Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter in addition to researching and writing articles for your blog or website, how will you get anything else in your business done?
(Keeping a business up and running is how most small business owners spend their working hours. Infographic: 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 VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent 6 or more hours each week on social media (the other half 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 probably be even 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 are spending more time marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend more time marketing and promoting themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited budget, time, and resources and many 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 social media sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. These companies can and will make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much time and effort building content on someone else’s real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other online accounts.
Investing in business automation to save time is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increased availability of many new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited resources, budget, and time. For example:
- Which of these channels do you focus more of your budget, efforts, and your time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method for automating your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should focus more budget, efforts, and 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 recommend avoiding black hat strategies, solutions, websites, and anything designed to “game” or violate the policies and terms of service of services like Pinterest, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not require the use of black hat methods!)
What we are focusing here is to show you how to be smart with your limited resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from 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 how many businesses lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to services one by one can be very time-consuming!)
Why not choose a smarter, time-saving strategy like 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 content once, and automate the distribution of your content to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social channels and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) 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 shown in Part Two. Then, get it configured as described in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you then automate the content distribution with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a number of WordPress plugins that can help:
- Post content to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content to other sites via RSS feeds
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, 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 great features.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part Three …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Distribute your content automatically to various social networks.)
After all plugin and account settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings show in the Publish area.)
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 content is published, it will be automatically syndicated online.)
Jetpack provides you with a hands-free way to get more exposure for your content online on social media networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting feature allows your blog readers to interact with your website or blog, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions as part of a community.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature using a number of 3rd-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like the ability to add twitter names to comments, search-indexable backlinks, social enticements for content sharing, and ability to use keywords in the name. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they enter their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included with their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your site.)
To learn more about using this WordPress plugin, go here:
Social LinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that allows you to syndicate content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – drip-feed content automatically to over 30 traffic-generating sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to dozens of social websites, including:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Folkd, Instapaper, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
Visit the plugin website to learn more about the benefits of this powerful plugin: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get useful information about your content distribution efforts), we have written a comprehensive article listing over 30 social media tracking tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns. More info:
The above are just a few examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating 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 Blueprint: Content Sharing Stage – Summary
Once your website and plugins have been fully set up and configured, all you need to do then is add new content regularly to drive web traffic.
If you need great content ideas for your site, we recommend subscribing to our email training series here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as can be improved. This step is explained in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Part Four
To keep reading about this topic, 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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