Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part One, we described the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is add web content regularly to automatically generate more web traffic!)
In Part 2, we discussed critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we looked at the configuration phase.
Here, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, you will learn how to set up various WordPress plugins that can drive web traffic automatically to your website when you begin to publish fresh content.
Why Automating The Traffic Generation Makes Sense
Depending on which marketing gurus you listen to, you could find yourself trying to spend a couple of hours or more each day posting content on social media while also running your business, creating content and managing your online presence.
Most business owners lack the time, 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 marketing experts recommend. If you spend hours posting updates on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn in addition to writing articles for your website or blog, how will you get anything else in your business done?
(Small businesses spend most of their time just keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many businesses spend most of their working hours trying to keep 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.
Research conducted by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent around six hours each week on social media (the other half spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This usage of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was conducted today, the figures 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.
(Small businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend more time promoting and marketing themselves online in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to focus their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited time, marketing budget, and resources and many different business 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, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These companies often will make decisions that impact your business without prior notification. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can control your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Investing in automation to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increased availability of so many new channels for promoting and marketing a business online creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited resources, marketing budgets, and time. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels do you focus more of your time, budget, and your efforts 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 ignoring 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 I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that allows you to automate the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this formula, 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 focus more of your budget, efforts, and your time 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 urge you to avoid using black hat strategies, websites, software, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of services like Facebook, Pinterest, Google, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not have to involve the use of black hat methods!)
What we are focusing here is not to manipulate online services or flaunt their terms of service, but 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 sites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen in the previous section how most businesses lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limited budget, time, and resources.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to marketing channels one by one 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 your content distribution to all other services.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media services and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content 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 explained in Part 2. Then, get it all configured as shown in Part Three. After all this is in place, you can then automate the content distribution using plugins like the ones discussed in the section 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 some traffic-generating plugins that can be used to:
- Post content to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically via RSS to other sites
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, GooglePlus and more as soon as you publish your content using a plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with loads of useful 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 automatically share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your content on various social media accounts.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account details in your Publish section.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it will be automatically distributed online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides an automated and hands-free way to create more exposure for your content online on social sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting feature allows your visitors to interact with your website, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature with a third-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread your content around.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they tweet, plus1, or like your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they type their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included below their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your web site.)
Go here to learn more about the benefits of using this handy plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – Content distribution plugin for WordPress)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that allows you to automatically syndicate content to dozens of traffic-generating sites, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate and drip-feed content automatically to over 30 online platforms)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to dozens of online websites, like:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Diigo, Instapaper, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Rebel Mouse, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
For more information about the benefits of using this handy plugin, visit this site: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get useful information about your content marketing efforts), we have written a detailed article on social media tracking tools that are worth knowing about. To learn more about this 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 Automation System: Content Syndication Phase – Summary
Once you have your website or blog and plugins expertly configured and set up, all you then need to do is publish web content regularly to automatically start attracting web traffic.
We have created an entire email training series aimed at helping you never run out of content for posting to your web site:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is addressed in the next article in our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Part 4
To keep reading, click here:
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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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