Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to create an automated web traffic generation machine using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part 1, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is post content consistently to automatically begin bringing web traffic!)
In Part Two, we discussed critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we discuss configuring the system.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you will configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, we will look at ways to automate your traffic with plugins.
Why Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which marketing gurus you get your advice from, you could end up investing a couple of hours each day (or more) posting content on social media, as well as trying to run your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Many small business owners simply lack the time, resources and budget to employ the services of a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts advise doing. If you spent all of your time posting updates on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter in addition to planning and writing articles for your website or blog, how would anything in your business get done?
(Keeping their business up and running is how most small business owners spend their time. Image source: NFIB)
Small businesses spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and make sales in order to survive.
Research done in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent at least six hours each week on social media (the rest spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was done today, the numbers would probably 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 their most time-consuming online activity.
(Small businesses are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to prioritize their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited budgets, time, and resources and many areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. These companies can make decisions that impact your business without prior warning. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can control your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other sites.
Automating processes to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the availability of so many new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited marketing budgets, time, and resources. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels do you focus more of your efforts, budget, 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, Tumblr, 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 Your Web Traffic Generation With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that allows you to automate the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should focus more time, budget, and efforts on,
- Invest most of your efforts building your own asset instead of someone else’s 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 tools, techniques, sites, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the policies and terms of service of services like Twitter, Facebook, Google.
(Web traffic automation doesn’t require the use of black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this article is to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and increase your exposure online to websites used by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen in the previous section that many small business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of posting content to different channels, which is extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to different services one at a time can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose this approach 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 web 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 website or blog as described in Part 2. Then, get it all configured as described in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you can then connect all of the dots with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic System – Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a few traffic-generation plugins that can be used to:
- Syndicate content to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically to other blogs via RSS feeds
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 loads of great features.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part Three …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin 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 Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Distribute your content automatically to several social media networks.)
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 options show in your post publishing section.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically be shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it is automatically distributed online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides an automated and hands-free way to create more exposure for your content online on social websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting function that lets your blog readers engage with your web site, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature with third-party plugins that integrate with social media, helping to share and spread them 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 like, +1, or tweet your content. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included with their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can help attract more comments and visitors and create more user engagement on your website or blog.)
To learn more about the benefits of this plugin, go here:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – Content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social LinkMachine is a plugin for WordPress that allows you to automatically drip-feed content, build backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed content to dozens of authority platforms)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to over 30 authority sites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Folkd, Instapaper, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Overblog, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
For more details about the benefits of this plugin, go here: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get useful information about your content distribution campaigns), we have written a detailed article on social media tracking tools that are worth checking out and knowing about. Go here to learn more about this:
The above are just a few 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 System: Automated Content Distribution Stage – Summary
Once your website or blog and plugins have been configured and set up, all you have to do to begin attracting more traffic is publish fresh content on a regular basis.
We have created a complete email training series aimed at helping you come up with limitless 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 you can. This step is addressed in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Part 4
To read more, click here:
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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