Welcome to Part Four of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to create an automated traffic generation machine using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part One of this series, we described the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to automatically begin attracting web traffic is publish great content consistently!)
In Part Two, we discuss critical setup decisions. We explain the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we look at the configuration phase of the blueprint.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 we show you how to configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section of the article series, we look at ways to automate traffic generation with different WordPress plugins.
Why Automate The Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which marketing experts you talk to, you could end up trying to spend a couple of hours each day (or more) promoting your business on social media while also trying to manage your business, your content and your online presence.
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 spend hours checking Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn in addition to writing content for your website or blog, how can anything else in your business get done?
(Keeping a business running is how most small business owners spend their time. Infographic: NFIB)
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 remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
Marketing research done by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent 6 or more hours each week on social media (the other half of 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 research was conducted today, the numbers would most likely 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 their most time-consuming online activity.
(Small businesses are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time promoting and marketing themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to prioritize their time on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited budget, resources, and time and many different 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 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 LinkedIn. These sites can and will make decisions that can significantly affect your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can control your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other online properties.
Automating business systems and processes to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increased availability of so many new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited resources, budgets, and time. For example:
- Which of these channels do you focus more of your efforts, budget, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, 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 Your Web Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that lets you automate the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should invest more of your efforts, time, and your budget 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 websites, techniques, solutions, and anything designed to “game” or violate the terms of service and policies of services like LinkedIn, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not require the use of black hat methods!)
The focus of this series of articles is not to manipulate web services or flaunt their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can 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
We’ve just seen that most businesses lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited resources, budget, and time.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to different marketing channels one at a time is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not use this time-saving strategy 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 your content distribution to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social sites and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content 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 site as described in Part 2. Then, get everything configured as shown in Part 3. After all this is in place, you can then automate the content distribution using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a look now at some examples of plugins that can help:
- Post content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically via RSS to other sites
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn 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 Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part Three …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
Configure this section to share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Share your content on several social media accounts.)
After configuring all plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account options in the Publish box.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically get shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they are automatically distributed online.)
Go here to learn more about the benefits of using this plugin: Jetpack WordPress Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting feature lets your visitors interact with your website or blog, post new comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content as part of a community.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature with 3rd-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them online.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they like, tweet, or +1 your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they are typing their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can choose to include with their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and web traffic and create more user engagement on your website or blog.)
Go here to learn more about this handy plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that lets you syndicate and drip-feed your content to over 30 authority websites, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed your content to over 30 online platforms)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to over 30 authority sites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Diigo, Kippt, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
For more details about using this WordPress plugin, visit the plugin website: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get useful information about your content marketing campaigns), or to learn more about social media measurement tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns, refer to this article:
The above are just some 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 System: Automated Content Sharing Stage – Summary
Once you have your website or blog and plugins fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then is add new content regularly to start driving traffic organically.
If you need ideas for content that you can post on your website, then subscribe 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 addressed in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Part 4
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
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