Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive visitors automatically to your site using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part 1 of this article series, we described the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to begin bringing new traffic is post content consistently!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase of the blueprint. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In Part 3, we focused on the configuration phase.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure all the settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this section of the series, we will discuss ways to automate traffic to your website using WordPress plugins.
Why You Should Consider Automating Your Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which business marketing experts you talk to, you could find yourself trying to spend 1-2 hours per day (or more) posting content on social media.
Most business owners lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts recommend doing. If you spent half a day checking Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in addition to planning and writing articles for your website or blog, how would anything else in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours just keeping their businesses up and running. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners 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 remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent at least 6 hours each week on social media (the rest 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 conducted today, the numbers would probably be significantly 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 are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend more time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to focus their time on other equally important areas …
(Businesses with limited budgets, resources, and time and many business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time 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 StumbleUpon. These companies can and will make decisions that impact your business without prior warning. Why invest so much effort and time building content on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can control your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other sites.
Investing in business automation to leverage time is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it 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 marketing budget, resources, and time. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels should you focus more budget, time, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that belong to other companies (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, 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 share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that allows you to automate your web traffic generation with WordPress.
With this strategy, 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 online marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should focus more time, efforts, and budget on,
- Invest most of your time and 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 strongly urge you to avoid using black hat methods, solutions, websites, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of companies like Twitter, Facebook, Google.
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t have to involve the use of black hat methods!)
The focus of this article series 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 websites 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 small businesses lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited resources, budget, and time.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to services one by one can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose this method 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 services and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) to other blogs and web 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 of this done?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress site as described in Part 2. Then, configure it as described in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you then automate these processes with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic System – Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at some traffic-generation plugins that can:
- Syndicate content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically to other sites via RSS feeds
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, 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 many great 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 a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your content automatically to several social networks.)
After all settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize options show in the post publishing section.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it is automatically syndicated online.)
Visit this site to learn more about the benefits of this powerful plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress built-in commenting function lets your site users engage with your website, post comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions as part of an online community.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature with a number of third-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share your content around.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your web site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like backlinks, the ability to add twitter handles to comments, using keywords in the user name, and social enticements for sharing content. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included below their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your site.)
To learn more about using this plugin, visit the plugin website:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a plugin that lets you drip-feed content, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate and drip-feed your content automatically to over 30 online platforms)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to many traffic-generating sites, like:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Folkd, Instapaper, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Sett, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
To learn more about this handy plugin, go here: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get useful information about your content marketing campaigns), we have written a detailed article on social media measurement tools and technologies that will help you identify new business opportunities, track competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that can affect your business,etc here:
The above are just a few examples of the many content distribution plugins that are available to WordPress users.
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: Automated Content Syndication Phase – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site and plugins configured and set up, all you have to do then to attract traffic is add content on a regular basis.
We have created an entire email course designed to help you come up with unlimited content ideas for posting to your 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 4
To read more, click here:
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"Learning WordPress has been a huge stumbling block for me. I've been looking for something that covers absolutely everything but doesn't cost an arm and a leg. Thank you so much ... you have just provided me with what I have been looking for! Truly appreciated!" - Tanya
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