Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to turn a website into an automated web traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part 1, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is add new content regularly to automatically attract new traffic!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase of the automation process. We helped you understand the best way to get started 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 website was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we looked at the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, we look at ways to automate the traffic system using a number of WordPress plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate The Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which expert you talk to, you could find yourself trying to spend 1-2 hours every day (or more) posting content on social media, as well as running your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Most businesses lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts prescribe. If you were to spend all of your time checking Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook in addition to researching and writing content for your blog or website, how would anything else in your business ever get done?
(Keeping a business running is how most small business owners spend their working hours. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their working hours trying to keep their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent at least 6 hours per week on social media (the other half of 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 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 was the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Small businesses spend more time each 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 puts more and more pressure on businesses to focus their time on other equally important areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and budgets and many 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 marketing and promoting your business on a number of social media sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or StumbleUpon. These companies often will make decisions that can significantly affect your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can control your own real estate and post your content automatically to other sites.
Automating business systems and processes to save time is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth marketing channels 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 do you focus more of your budget, efforts, and your time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that belong to other companies (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method for automating the 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 marketing channels you should invest more of your efforts, time, and your budget on,
- Invest most of your time and efforts building your own asset instead of someone else’s 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 urge you to avoid using black hat sites, techniques, tools, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of companies like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t require the use of black hat methods!)
The focus of this article series is not to game web services or break their terms of service, but to show you how to 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
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, many small businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of posting content to each marketing channel, which can be very time-consuming …
(Posting content to individual marketing channels is very time-consuming!)
Why not choose a smarter, time-saving strategy 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:
- Automatically distribute content to social media sites and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress site as explained in Part 2. Then, expertly configure it as shown in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you can then automate these processes using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at some examples of traffic-generation plugins that can be used to:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically to other sites via RSS feeds
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus 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 features.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (set up in Part Three.) …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize feature)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Share your posts automatically on various social networks.)
After all of the settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize options show in your publishing area.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they are automatically shared online.)
Jetpack provides an automated and hands-free way to create more exposure for your content online on social media networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress native commenting function lets your visitors interact with your website or blog, post new comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature with a third-party plugin that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread them online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can create more user engagement on your website. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like using keywords in the user name, backlinks, the ability to add twitter handles to comments, and social enticements for content-sharing. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they are typing their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included with their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv can attract more comments and web traffic and improve user engagement on your website or blog.)
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, visit the plugin site:
SocialLinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that allows you to syndicate and drip-feed content to dozens of authority sites, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate your content to over 30 online sites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to dozens of traffic-generating sites, including:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Delicious, Linkagogo, Plurk, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Overblog, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
Visit this website to learn more about the benefits of using this handy plugin: 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 monitoring tools and technologies that are worth checking out and knowing about. More information:
The above are just a few 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 Automation System: Automated Content Distribution Process – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins set up and expertly configured, all you have to do to automatically attract new web traffic is add web content regularly.
We have created an entire email course designed to help you never run out of great content ideas for your site:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is covered in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read the rest of this article series, click on the link below:
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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