Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic generating machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part One of this series, we explained 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 is publish fresh content consistently to automatically attract web traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase. We helped you understand 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 site was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In Part 3, we discuss the configuration phase.
Here, we configure all the settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three we show you how to configure all the settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this step, we look at ways to automate traffic to your website using a number of plugins.
Why Automate Your Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on which marketing guru you get your advice from, you could find yourself trying to spend an hour every day (or more) posting content on social media in addition to trying to manage your business, your content and your online presence.
Most business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to run a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts advise. If you spent half a day posting updates on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn in addition to planning and writing content for your blog or website, how would anything else in your business ever get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours simply keeping their businesses up and running. Source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their working hours 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 make sales in order to survive.
Marketing research conducted by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all 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 was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was conducted today, the figures would probably be even higher.
- More than half of all small businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more creating a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media was the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Small businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend more time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to focus their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited budgets, time, and resources and many different business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social media sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. These companies can and will make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without prior notification. Why invest so much time and effort building content on someone else’s asset? With WordPress, you can control your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other online accounts.
Investing in automation to leverage time is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth channels for marketing and promoting a business creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited marketing budgets, time, and resources. For example:
- Which of these channels should you invest more of your time, budget, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating The Web Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that lets you automate your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should focus more budget, time, and your efforts on,
- Invest most of your time 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 urge you to avoid using black hat tools, techniques, websites, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the terms of service and policies of sites like Google, Facebook, Pinterest, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not require the use of black hat methods!)
The focus of this article is not to game online services or break their terms of service, but 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 visited by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that many businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose this one 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 media services and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) 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 get all this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as shown in Part 2. Then, expertly configure it as shown in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then automate the process using plugins such as the ones shown in the following section.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic System – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at a number of traffic-generating plugins that can be used to:
- Distribute content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically to other websites via RSS
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, 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, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Publicize your posts to several social sites.)
After all account and plugin settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account details in your post publishing section.)
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 you publish, your posts are automatically distributed online.)
To learn more about this powerful plugin, visit the plugin website: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting function lets your visitors interact with your web site, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature using a third-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates with social media, helping to spread and share your content around.
For example, a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they tweet, like, or +1 your post. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they enter their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can include with their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your site.)
To learn more about using this great plugin, go here:
Social LinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that lets you syndicate your content to many online sites, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed your content to many traffic-generating websites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to over 30 online sites, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Folkd, Kippt, Zotero, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
Visit the plugin site to learn more about the benefits of using this 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 marketing efforts), we have written a detailed article listing a number of social media measurement tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives. More information:
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 Automation System: Automated Content Distribution Process – Summary
Once you have your site and plugins expertly configured and set up, all you then have to do is post great content regularly to generate web traffic organically.
If you need great ideas for posting content on your website, then subscribe to our FREE email training series on growing your business with content marketing here:
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 section of our series.
This is the end of Section 4
To keep reading about this topic, click on the link below:
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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