Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part One, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to automatically attract more web traffic is publish web content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we discuss the setup phase. We explain the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we look at the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 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 explain how to set up various WordPress plugins that can help drive visitors automatically to your website just by adding content regularly.
Why Automate Your Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on which marketing experts you talk to, you could end up spending an hour or more every day posting content on social media while also trying to manage your business, your content and your web presence.
Many small business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are advising. If you are spending half your day checking LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook in addition to writing content for your blog or website, how will you get anything else in your business done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time just keeping their businesses up and running. Source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent 6 or more hours per week on social media (the rest 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 research was conducted today, the figures would most likely be higher.
- More than half of all small 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. Image source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time promoting and marketing themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other areas …
(Businesses with limited time, budget, and resources and many different business areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on a number of social media websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. These sites can make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building content on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can have complete control of your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other online accounts.
Automating systems and process to leverage time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth channels for promoting and marketing a business online creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited time, marketing budgets, and resources. For example:
- Which channels should you invest more of your time, efforts, and your budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not control (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring the benefits of building content on 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 Traffic Generation With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy for automating your traffic generation with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website 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 time on,
- Invest most of your time 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 software, sites, methods, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of sites like Facebook, Pinterest, Google, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not require using black hat methods!)
What we are focusing here is 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 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 business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of posting content to services one at a time, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to services one at a time is very time-consuming!)
Why not choose a smarter, time-saving approach 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 marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social channels and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) automatically 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 of this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as explained in Part 2. Then, expertly configure your site settings as explained in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then automate the content distribution with plugins such as the ones discussed below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic System – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at some traffic-generating plugins that can help to:
- Syndicate content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically to other online properties via RSS
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, 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 great features.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part 3 …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your posts automatically to several 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 account options displayed in the Publish area.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they are automatically shared online.)
To learn more about this plugin, go here: Jetpack Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting feature allows your site users to interact with your website, post comments, reply to other users and engage with your content.
You can expand the WordPress built-in commenting feature with a number of third-party plugins that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them online.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they like, tweet, or +1 your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they are entering their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can choose to include with their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv Premium version can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your website or blog.)
To learn more about this great plugin, visit the plugin site:
Social Link Machine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a plugin that allows you to automatically syndicate content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed content to many online sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to over 30 online platforms, including:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Plurk, Reddit, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Sett, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
For more details about the benefits of using this WordPress plugin, visit the plugin website: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get useful information about your content marketing campaigns), we have written a comprehensive article about social media tracking tools and technologies that are worth checking out and knowing about. For more details, go here:
The above are just some 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 Syndication Phase – Summary
Once your website or blog and plugins have been fully set up and configured, all you need to do then to automatically drive web traffic is publish content regularly.
If you need endless content ideas for your website, then subscribe to our FREE email training course on 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 explained in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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