Welcome to Part 4 of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to automate traffic to your website using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part One of this article series, we provided an overview of the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is publish new content on a consistent basis to automatically drive web traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at 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 focus on 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 Three you will configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In this step, we will show you how to set up various WordPress plugins that can bring traffic automatically to your site.
Why Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on which online marketing gurus you get your advice from, you could find yourself trying to spend an hour or more a day posting content on social media.
Most small business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to run a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise doing. If you spent most of your time posting updates on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter in addition to planning and writing content for your website or blog, how could you get anything else in your business done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and make sales in order to survive.
Research conducted by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent at least 6 hours per week on social media (most of the other businesses surveyed that used 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 done today, the figures would most likely be even 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. Source: VerticalResponse)
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 prioritize their time on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited time, marketing budget, and resources and many business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on a number of social media sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. These sites can make decisions that affect your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much effort and time building content on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can have complete control of your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Automating business systems and processes to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increased availability of many new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited budget, time, and resources. For example:
- Which of these channels should you invest more budget, efforts, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you ultimately have no control over (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, 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 Your Web Traffic Generation With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula for automating the traffic generation with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more budget, time, and efforts 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 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 recommend avoiding black hat techniques, sites, software, and anything designed to “game” or violate the terms of service and policies of sites like Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not need to involve using black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing here is not to manipulate web services or break their terms of service, but to show you how to be smart with your limited resources and automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites frequented 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, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts advise. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of posting content to each different marketing channel, which can be very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels one at a time can be 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 your content distribution to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media sites and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content automatically 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 WordPress website as shown in Part 2. Then, get it configured as explained in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then automate these processes using plugins such as the ones shown in the following section.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic System – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at some examples of traffic-generation plugins that can be used to:
- Post content to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically via RSS to other blogs
Jetpack by WordPress.com
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn 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 loads of useful features.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to 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 …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Publicize your content automatically to various social accounts.)
After all of the settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details in your publishing box.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it will be automatically syndicated online.)
Jetpack provides you with a hands-free way to get more exposure for your content online on social sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress built-in commenting feature allows your blog readers to engage with your website, post new comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature with a third-party plugin that integrates your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website or blog. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like backlinks, social enticements for sharing your content, using keywords in the name, and the ability to add twitter names to comments. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can choose to include with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv can attract more comments and create more user engagement on your website or blog.)
Go here to learn more about the benefits of using this powerful plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
SocialLinkMachine is a plugin for WordPress that lets you automatically syndicate and drip-feed content, build backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate your content automatically to many authority platforms)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to dozens of authority sites, such as:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Instapaper, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
Go here to learn more about this powerful plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get actionable information about your content distribution campaigns), we have written a detailed article listing several social media monitoring tools that are worth knowing about. More information:
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 Automation System: Automated Content Syndication Process – Summary
Once your website or blog and plugins have been set up and configured, all you need to do is publish content on a regular basis to begin bringing web traffic.
If you need endless content ideas for your web site, then subscribe to our FREE email training course on growing your business with content marketing here:
Once you have 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 more, click on the link below:
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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