Welcome to Part Four of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to automate traffic to your website using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part 1, we provided an overview of the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to automatically bring traffic is publish great content on a regular basis!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase of this process. We explained the best way to get started 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 was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we focused on the configuration phase.
Here, we configure all the settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 you will configure all the settings that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part 4, we discuss ways to automate traffic generation with different WordPress plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate The Traffic Generation Process
Depending on who you listen to, you could find yourself investing a couple of hours or more per day promoting your business on social media in addition to running your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Many small business owners simply lack the time, resources and financial means to run a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are advising. If you are spending hours posting updates on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter in addition to planning and writing content for your website or blog, how can anything else in your business get done?
(Keeping their business up and running is how most small businesses spend their time. Image source: NFIB)
Many business owners 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 in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent at least six hours per week on social media (most of the other businesses surveyed using 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 survey was done today, the numbers 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 their most time-consuming online activity.
(Businesses are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend more time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, marketing budgets, and time and many areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social media sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. These companies can and will make decisions that affect your business without prior warning. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on someone else’s asset? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can have complete control of your own real estate and post your content automatically to other online properties.
Automating processes to save time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increasing availability of many new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited marketing budgets, time, and resources. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you focus more of your time, efforts, and budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, 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 Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that allows you to automate your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, 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 web marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more of your efforts, time, and your budget on,
- Invest most of your efforts building your own asset 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 software, websites, methods, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not need to involve the use of black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this series of articles is to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and increase your exposure online to sites visited by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, most businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited time, resources, and budget.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to individual channels can be extremely 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 once, and automate the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media sites 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 WordPress site as shown in Part 2. Then, get everything configured as shown in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you can then automate your content distribution with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at a few WordPress plugins that can help:
- Syndicate content to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically via RSS to other blogs
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+ 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 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)
Configure this section to share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts on several social networks.)
After all plugin and account settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings in the publishing box.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically get shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they will be automatically syndicated online.)
Go here to learn more about this plugin: Jetpack WordPress Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress commenting function lets your blog readers interact with your website or blog, post new comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content as part of a community.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature using third-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them online.
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 plus1, like, or tweet your post. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they enter their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which can be included at the bottom of their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website or blog.)
Go here to learn more about this plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a plugin that allows you to drip-feed content, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate and drip-feed your content to over 30 traffic-generating platforms)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to over 30 traffic-generating platforms, including:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Delicious, Linkagogo, Plurk, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about using this plugin, go here: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get useful information about your content marketing efforts), go here to learn more about social media monitoring tools that will help you identify new trends and opportunities, track competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that could affect your business,etc:
The above are just some examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating and sharing 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 Distribution Phase – Summary
Once your website or blog and plugins have been expertly configured and set up, all you have to do then to automatically start attracting traffic is publish content on a consistent basis.
If you need great content ideas for your website or blog, then subscribe to our FREE email training course on growing your business online with content marketing here:
Once you have 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 the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read the rest of this article series, 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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