Welcome to Part Four of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part One of this series, we described the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is add content regularly to start generating new web traffic!)
In Part 2, we discussed critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to get started 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 site was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part Three, we discussed the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, you will learn how to set up various plugins that can help get visitors automatically to your website or blog.
Why You Should Consider Automating The Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which business marketing expert you get your advice from, you could end up trying to spend an hour or more every day posting content on social media.
Most small businesses simply lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts recommend doing. If you are spending half your day checking LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter in addition to writing articles for your blog or website, how can anything else in your business get done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small business owners spend their time. Source: NFIB)
Many business owners spend most of their working hours just 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.
A study of small businesses done by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent at least six hours per week on social media (the other half 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 done today, the numbers would most likely be significantly 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 the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other equally important areas …
(Businesses with limited budget, time, and resources 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 promoting and marketing your business on a number of 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 StumbleUpon. These companies can 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 a self-hosted WordPress site, you can control your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other sites.
Automating systems and process to leverage time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increased availability of hundreds of new channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited resources, time, and budget. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels do you focus 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, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting 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 Web Traffic Generation With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method for automating your web traffic generation with WordPress.
With this strategy, 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 online marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should invest more budget, efforts, and your time 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 strategies, websites, tools, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of sites like Twitter, Facebook, Google.
(Web traffic automation does not require the use of black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing here is to show you how to be smart with your limited resources and automate your content distribution so you can 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 that most businesses 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 to be strategic and work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to individual channels is very 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 content once, and automate the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media channels 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 website or blog as explained in Part Two. Then, expertly configure it as shown in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then automate various processes with 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 quick look at a number of WordPress plugins that can be used to:
- Syndicate content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content via RSS feeds to other websites
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, 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 many great functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part 3 …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
Configure this section to share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your content to various social networks.)
After all of the account and plugin settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account details in the Publish area.)
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 will be automatically distributed online.)
This is a hands-free way to create more exposure for your content online on social sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress built-in commenting function allows your visitors to engage with your website, post new comments, reply to other users and engage with your content as part of a social community.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature with a number of 3rd-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments with social media, helping to spread and share your content around.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they like, +1, or tweet your content. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which can be included below their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website.)
To learn more about this great plugin, go here:
Social LinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that allows you to syndicate content to many authority websites, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed your content to many traffic-generating platforms)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to many social websites, including:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Instapaper, Reddit, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Sett, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
To learn more about the benefits of using this plugin, visit this site: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get actionable information about your content distribution efforts), we have created a detailed article where we explore a number of social media measurement tools and technologies that are worth knowing about. For more details, go here:
The above are just some examples of the many content distribution plugins that WordPress makes available.
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: Content Distribution Process – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site and plugins configured and fully set up, all you have to do then to generate more traffic is publish new content on a consistent basis.
We have created a complete email series aimed at helping you never run out of content for posting to 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 addressed in the next article in our WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read more, click on the link below:
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"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie
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