Welcome to Part Four of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to turn your website into an automated traffic generating machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part 1, we provided an overview of the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to automatically start generating more traffic is add new content consistently!)
In Part Two, we discuss the setup phase. We help you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part Three, we look at the configuration phase of the blueprint.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you will configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this step, we will look at ways to automate traffic generation with WordPress plugins.
Why Automate The Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which expert you talk to, you could find yourself spending an hour or two per day (or more) promoting your business on social media, as well as running your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Most business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to employ the services of a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts recommend. If you are spending half your day posting updates on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook in addition to writing content for your blog or website, how will you get anything else in your business done?
(Keeping a business up and running is how most small business owners spend their working hours. Infographic source: NFIB)
Small businesses spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
Marketing research conducted in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent around six hours per week on social media (the other half of businesses surveyed using 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 small businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more to create a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media consumed the most time online.
(Businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small 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 focus their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited time, budgets, and resources and many different areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on various social websites, all of your efforts are going 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 affect your business without prior notification. Why invest so much effort and time building content on someone else’s real estate? With WordPress, you can control your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other sites.
Automating processes to leverage time is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited resources, budget, and time. For example:
- Which marketing channels should you invest more of your budget, efforts, and your 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 the benefits of building content on your own domain?
- 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 show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that allows you to automate your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog 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 budget on,
- Invest most of your time and 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 strongly urge you to avoid using black hat solutions, strategies, sites, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of sites like Google, YouTube, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t have to involve using black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this article series is to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution in order to 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 businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts advise. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of using this approach …
(Posting content to services individually is very time-consuming!)
Why not choose this method 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 your content distribution to all other services.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media services and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) 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 WordPress website as explained in Part Two. Then, get it configured as described in Part 3. After all this is in place, you can then automate the process using plugins like the ones shown below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a few traffic-generation plugins that can help to:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content to other sites via RSS feeds
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus and more as soon as you publish new content using a plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many great features.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize feature)
Configure this section to share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Distribute your content to several social sites.)
After all of the plugin and account settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings in the publishing section.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your posts are automatically distributed online.)
For more details about using this WordPress plugin, go here: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting function allows your site users to engage with your site, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature using a 3rd-party plugin that integrates your comments with social media, helping to spread and share them online.
For example, with a WordPress 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 name, social enticements for sharing your content, adding twitter names to comments, and backlinks. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they enter their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can include at the bottom of their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and web traffic and improve user engagement on your website or blog.)
Go here to learn more about this handy plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – Content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that lets you syndicate your content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed your content automatically to many traffic-generating websites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to over 30 authority sites, such as:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Folkd, Kippt, Reddit, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Sett, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
To learn more about this plugin, go here: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get useful information about your content marketing efforts), we have written a comprehensive article on social media tracking tools and technologies that are worth checking out and knowing about here:
The above are just some examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating 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 Blueprint: Content Sharing Stage – Summary
Once your website or blog and plugins have been expertly configured and fully set up, all you then need to do is post content consistently to automatically begin bringing more traffic organically.
We have created an entire email training series designed to help you come up with unlimited content ideas for your site:
Once you have expertly 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 section of the WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
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