Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part 1, we provide an overview of the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is add web content regularly to automatically attract more web traffic!)
In Part 2, we discuss the setup phase of the automation process. We help you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your site was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In Part 3, we looked at the configuration phase.
Here, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you will configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section of the article series, you will learn how to set up various plugins that can help drive new traffic automatically to your site simply by posting web content.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which marketing guru you talk to, you could find yourself spending 1-2 hours per day (or more) posting content on social media.
Many 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 online marketing experts are recommending. If you spend half your day posting updates on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook in addition to researching and writing content for your website or blog, how will you get anything else in your business done?
(Keeping a business up and running is how most small businesses spend their time. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
Marketing research done in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent six or more hours each 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 research was conducted today, the figures would probably be 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 consumed the most time online.
(Small businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to prioritize their time on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, budget, and time and many different business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other important 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 companies can and will make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building content on someone else’s asset? With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can control your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other sites.
Automating processes to leverage time is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever 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 time, marketing budgets, and resources. For example:
- Which of these channels should you invest more efforts, budget, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not control (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring the benefits of building content on your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that allows you to automate your traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should invest more time, efforts, and budget on,
- Invest most of your efforts 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 websites, strategies, tools, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the terms of service and policies of companies like YouTube, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not have to involve the use of black hat methods!)
The purpose of this article series is not to manipulate web services or bypass their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and increase your exposure online to 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 business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited time, budget, and resources.
So, instead of using this time-consuming approach …
(Posting content to marketing channels one by one is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose a smarter, time-saving approach like 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 the distribution of your content to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media sites and 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as shown in Part Two. Then, get everything configured as explained 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 Web Traffic System – Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a few WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically to other blogs via RSS
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn and more as soon as you publish new content using a WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with loads of great functions.
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 on Jetpack)
Configure this section to share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Distribute your content automatically to several social accounts.)
After all account and plugin settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details displays in the publishing section.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically get shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they will be automatically shared online.)
This is a hands-free, automated way to get more exposure for your content online on social media websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress commenting system lets your site users interact with your website or blog, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature with third-party commenting plugins that integrate your comments with social media, helping to spread and share your content online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can create more user engagement on your web site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like ability to use keywords in the user name, social enticements for content-sharing, backlinks, and the ability to add twitter usernames to comments. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they are entering their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which can be included below their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can help attract more comments and improve user engagement on your website.)
Visit this website to learn more about the benefits of this great plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – Content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget plugin that allows you to automatically drip-feed content to over 30 social platforms, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate your content to dozens of traffic-generating sites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to over 30 authority websites, including:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Kippt, Reddit, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Blogger, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
Go here to learn more about the benefits of this powerful plugin: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get useful information about your content distribution campaigns), go here for a detailed article on social media tracking tools and technologies that you may want to check out:
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 Automation Blueprint: Content Syndication Phase – Summary
Once your site and plugins have been expertly configured and set up, all you have to do to drive web traffic is post new content consistently.
If you need endless content ideas for your website, then subscribe to our email training series 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 the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part 4
To read more, click here:
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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