Welcome to Part Four of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part One, we provide an overview of the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to begin bringing more web traffic is publish content on a regular basis!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase of the traffic automation system. We helped you understand 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 website or blog on your domain)
In Part Three, we discussed important configuration decisions.
Here, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure all the settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this article, we discuss ways to automate traffic to your website using various plugins.
Why Automate The Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which expert you listen to, you could find yourself spending an hour or more every day posting content on social media while also managing your business, your content and your web presence.
Most businesses simply lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts prescribe. If you spent hours checking Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn in addition to planning and writing content for your blog or website, how would you get anything else in your business done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours simply keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their working hours simply keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
Research done in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent around six 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 was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was done today, the figures would probably be even higher.
- More than half of all businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more creating a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media was their most time-consuming online activity.
(Businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend more time marketing and promoting themselves online in order to compete and survive, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited budgets, time, and resources and many business areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on various social media websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. These sites can and will make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building content on someone else’s real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own real estate and post your content automatically to other online accounts.
Automating processes to leverage time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited resources, marketing budget, and time. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels do you invest more time, budget, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not control (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on 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 I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula for automating your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more time, efforts, and your budget on,
- Invest most of your efforts 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 recommend avoiding black hat solutions, methods, websites, and anything designed to “game” or violate the terms of service and policies of sites like Facebook, YouTube, Google, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t require the use of black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this series of articles is to show you how to be smart with your 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 that most business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited time, resources, and budget.
So, instead of posting content to marketing channels one at a time, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different services one at a time can be very time-consuming!)
Why not use 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 content once, and automate the distribution of your content to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media channels and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content to other blogs and online 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 site as shown in Part Two. Then, get it configured as explained in Part 3. After all this is in place, you then connect all of the dots using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a few plugins that can:
- Syndicate content to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically to other online properties via RSS feeds
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ 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 you set up in Part 3 …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack – Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your content automatically on several social networks.)
After configuring all plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account options show in the post publishing box.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, 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 shared online.)
Visit the plugin website for more details about using this powerful plugin: Jetpack Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting feature allows your site users to interact with your website, 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 like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread them online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they like, tweet, or +1 your post. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included with their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can help attract more comments and improve user engagement on your site.)
Visit this website to learn more about this plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that allows you to drip-feed your content to over 30 online platforms, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed content automatically to dozens of authority websites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to many social platforms, including:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Folkd, Instapaper, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Rebel Mouse, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Gett, 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 actionable information about your content marketing efforts), we have written a comprehensive article on social media monitoring tools that are worth knowing about. For more info, see this article:
The above are just some examples of the many content distribution plugins that WordPress makes available.
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 Distribution Stage – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins configured and set up, all you have to do is add content on a regular basis to automatically begin attracting more traffic organically.
We have created a complete email email-based training course designed to help you never run out of great content for posting to your web site:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is covered in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read more, 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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