Welcome to Part 4 of our WordPress 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 explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to automatically generate more web traffic is publish fresh content regularly!)
In Part Two, we look at the setup phase of this process. We explain the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing website is built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we look at the configuration phase of the blueprint.
Here, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part 4, we will look at ways to automate traffic to your website using various WordPress plugins.
Why Automate Your Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on who you listen to, you could find yourself trying to spend an hour or more every day posting content on social media.
Most business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise doing. If you are spending half your day checking Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn in addition to writing content for your blog or website, how will you get anything else in your business done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many business owners spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and make sales in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent at least 6 hours each 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 research was done today, the numbers would probably be 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.
(Small businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budgets, time, and resources and many different business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on a number of social media 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 often will make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other websites.
Automating processes to leverage time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increasing availability of hundreds of new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited time, resources, and budgets. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels do you focus more of your efforts, budget, and your time 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 Your Web Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method for automating the web traffic generation with WordPress.
With this formula, 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 channels,
- Determine which channels you should focus more time, budget, and your efforts on,
- Invest most of your time and efforts 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 staying away from all black hat sites, tools, techniques, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the terms of service and policies of services like YouTube, Facebook, Google.
(Web traffic automation doesn’t have to involve using black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this article series 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 get additional exposure online from sites used by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, most business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited time, resources, and budget.
So, instead of choosing this approach …
(Posting content to individual channels can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not opt for a smarter, time-saving approach 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 content one-time, and automate the distribution of your content to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media services and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content to other blogs and web 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as shown in Part 2. Then, configure it as described in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then automate these processes using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a few plugins that can:
- Post content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically to other online properties via RSS
Jetpack
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 great features.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part 3 …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Publicize your posts automatically to various social sites.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings in your post publishing area.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your post will be automatically syndicated online.)
Go here to learn more about this great plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting system that lets your site users engage with your website or blog, post new comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content.
You can expand the WordPress built-in commenting feature using a 3rd-party plugin that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread your content online.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they tweet, +1, or like your post. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they enter their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which they can choose to include at the bottom of their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your web site.)
Go here to learn more about the benefits of using this plugin:
Social Link Machine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget plugin that lets you drip-feed your content to over 30 authority sites, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed content to dozens of traffic-generating sites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to dozens of social websites, like:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Folkd, Instapaper, Reddit, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Rebel Mouse, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
For more information about the benefits of this plugin, visit the plugin website: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get useful information about your content distribution campaigns), we have written a detailed article listing many social media monitoring tools and technologies that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives. More information:
The above are just a few examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating and sharing 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 Blueprint: Automated Content Sharing Process – Summary
Once you have your site and plugins fully set up and configured, all you need to do then to automatically attract traffic is add web content on a consistent basis.
We have created a complete email course aimed at helping you never run out of content for your website or blog:
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 WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 4
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