Welcome to Part 4 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, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part 1 of this series, we provided an overview of the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is add fresh content on a consistent basis to generate more traffic!)
In Part 2, we look at the setup phase. We help you understand the best way to start 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 existing site is built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we focused on configuring the system.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part 4, you will learn how to set up various plugins that can help get new traffic automatically to your website or blog as you begin to post new content regularly.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate The Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which online marketing experts you listen to, you could find yourself trying to spend an hour a day (or more) promoting your business on social media.
Many small business owners simply lack the time, resources and financial means to run a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are advising. If you spent hours checking Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing articles for your blog or website, how could you get anything else in your business done?
(Keeping a business up and running is how most small businesses spend their working hours. Infographic source: NFIB)
Many businesses spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
Marketing research done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent around 6 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 use of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was conducted today, the numbers would most likely be 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 consumed the most time online.
(Small businesses are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to prioritize their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and marketing budget and many areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social media sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These sites can make decisions that can significantly impact your business without prior notification. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on someone else’s asset? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own real estate and post your content automatically to other sites.
Investing in automation to save time is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increased availability of so many new channels for promoting and marketing a business online creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited time, resources, and budget. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels should you focus more time, budget, and efforts 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 website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic Generation With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that allows you to automate the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this formula, 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 web marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more of your time, efforts, and budget on,
- Invest most of your time building your own asset 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 sites, solutions, methods, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the terms of service and policies of services like YouTube, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not require the use of black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this series of articles is not to manipulate online services or bypass 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 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 how most small business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to individual marketing channels is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not do this 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 once, and automate your content distribution to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social services and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content automatically 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 of this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as explained in Part Two. Then, get everything configured as described in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you then automate the content distribution with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic System – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a few plugins that can help:
- Distribute content to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically via RSS feeds to other sites
Jetpack
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 useful features.
After Jetpack has been installed, 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 plugin – Publicize feature)
Configure this section to share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your posts to various social media accounts.)
After all settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details in your publishing section.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically get shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your posts are automatically shared online.)
Jetpack provides a hands-free way to get more exposure for your content online on social media websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting system lets your site users engage with your site, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions as part of a social community.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature with 3rd-party plugins that integrate your comments with social media, helping to spread and share them around.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can improve user engagement on your site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like using keywords in the user name, SEO backlinks, social enticements for content sharing, and the ability to add twitter handles to comments. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they are entering their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included with their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can attract more comments and improve user engagement on your website.)
Go here to learn more about this plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – Content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a plugin for WordPress that allows you to automatically drip-feed content to dozens of authority platforms, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed your content automatically to dozens of traffic-generating websites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to over 30 online websites, such as:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Linkagogo, Plurk, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Rebel Mouse, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
Visit this website to learn more about the benefits of using this handy plugin: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get useful information about your content marketing efforts), we have created a detailed article listing over 30 social media tracking tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives. Go here for more details:
The above are just some 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 Blueprint: Content Syndication Process – Summary
Once your website or blog and plugins have been expertly configured and set up, all you then need to do is add fresh content on a regular basis to automatically begin attracting more web traffic.
If you need great content ideas for your web site, 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 covered in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read more, click here:
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