Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic generating machine using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part 1 of this article series, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to automatically start driving web traffic is post new content regularly!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase of the blueprint. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing website was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we discussed important configuration decisions.
Here, we configure all the settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 we show you how to configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this step, we discuss ways to automate traffic to your website using plugins.
Why Automating The Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on which marketing gurus you listen to, you could end up spending 1-2 hours every day (or more) posting content on social media, as well as running your business, creating content and managing your online presence.
Most small business owners lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts recommend. If you were to spend all of your time posting updates on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook in addition to researching and writing content for your blog or website, how would anything in your business get done?
(Keeping a business running is how most small businesses spend their time. Image source: NFIB)
Many businesses spend most of their working hours just keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
Marketing research done in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent around 6 hours per week on social media (the other half 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 higher.
- More than half of all small businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more to create 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 promoting and marketing themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to focus their time on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited budget, time, and resources and many different 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, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. These sites often will make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much effort and time building content on someone else’s asset? With WordPress, you can control your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other sites.
Investing in business automation to save time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increasing availability of many new channels for promoting and marketing a business creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited resources, time, and marketing budget. For example:
- Which channels do you invest more of your time, efforts, and your budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy for automating the web traffic generation with WordPress.
With this method, 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 channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more time, budget, and 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 recommend staying away from all black hat websites, methods, software, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the policies and terms of service of companies like Facebook, Google, Pinterest, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not require the use of black hat methods!)
The focus of this article series is to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and get additional exposure online from websites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, many business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limited budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different services one at a time can be very 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 content one-time, and automate the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress website as explained in Part Two. Then, get everything configured as explained in Part 3. After all this is in place, you then automate your content distribution with plugins like the ones listed below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at some traffic-generation WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Post content to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content via RSS feeds to other sites
Jetpack by WordPress.com
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 installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
You can share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Distribute your content automatically to several social sites.)
After all of the 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 details in the Publish section.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your content will be automatically distributed online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides an automated and hands-free way to get more exposure online for your content on social media websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting function that allows your site users to engage with your website, post comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress built-in commenting feature using third-party plugins that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content around.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they tweet, +1, or like your post. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they enter 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 attract more comments and create more user engagement on your site.)
Visit the plugin site to learn more about using this plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a plugin for WordPress that lets you automatically drip-feed content to over 30 social sites, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate content to over 30 authority websites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to dozens of authority sites, including:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Linkagogo, Plurk, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
Visit this website to learn more about this handy plugin: Social LinkMachine
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), we have written a comprehensive article on social media monitoring tools and technologies that will help you identify new trends and opportunities, track competitor activity, see what online conversations are taking place that affect your business,etc. For more details, go here:
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 Automation Blueprint: Automated Content Distribution Process – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do then is publish great content regularly to automatically begin attracting web traffic.
We have created a complete email series designed to help you never run out of content ideas for your site:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as you can. This step is addressed in the next section of our WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read more, click here:
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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