Welcome to Part Four of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to drive traffic automatically to your site using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part One, we explain 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 add fresh content on a consistent basis to automatically start driving traffic!)
In Part Two, we focused on critical setup decisions. 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 website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In Part Three, we looked at configuring WordPress.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section of the series, we look at ways to automate the traffic system with different plugins.
Why Automate The Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which marketing gurus you talk to, you could end up investing 1-2 hours every day (or more) posting content on social media.
Most business owners lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts prescribe. If you spent all of your time checking Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn in addition to writing articles for your website or blog, how could you get anything in your business done?
(Keeping a business up and running is how most small businesses spend their working hours. Infographic: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many businesses spend most of their time trying to keep their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
Research conducted by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent at least six hours per week on social media (the other half spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This 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 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 spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time marketing and promoting themselves online in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to focus their time on other equally important areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, budget, and time and many 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 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 StumbleUpon. These sites can make decisions that can significantly affect your business without consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on someone else’s asset? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other sites.
Investing in business automation to save time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth channels for promoting and marketing a business online creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited resources, time, and marketing budgets. For example:
- Which marketing channels should you focus more of your budget, efforts, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula for automating your web traffic generation with WordPress.
With this method, 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 channels you should focus more time, efforts, and your budget on,
- Invest most of your efforts building your own asset 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, strategies, sites, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of companies like LinkedIn, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t have to involve using black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this series of articles is to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and get additional exposure online from 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 small business owners lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited time, resources, and budget.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different channels can be very time-consuming!)
Why not use this time-saving method 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 your content distribution to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically 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 site as described in Part 2. Then, configure your site settings as described in Part 3. After all 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 – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a few traffic-generation plugins that can help:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically to other blogs via RSS feeds
Jetpack by WordPress.com
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 WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with loads of useful features.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
You can share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Distribute your posts to several social media sites.)
After configuring all of the account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings displays in the publishing section.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically get shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they are automatically shared online.)
Go here to learn more about this plugin: Jetpack WordPress Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting function allows your blog readers to engage with your site, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature with a number of third-party plugins that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share your content online.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they like, +1, or tweet your post. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they are typing their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which they can include with their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website.)
For more details about using this plugin, go here:
Social LinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – Content distribution plugin for WordPress)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that lets you syndicate your content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed your content to over 30 authority sites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to over 30 traffic-generating platforms, including:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Diigo, Plurk, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
Visit this website for more information about this handy plugin: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get useful information about your content marketing efforts), we have written a detailed article on social media measurement tools and technologies that will help you identify new business opportunities, track competitor activity, see what online conversations are taking place that affect your business,etc here:
The above are just a few examples of the many content distribution plugins that are available to WordPress users.
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 you have your WordPress site and plugins configured and set up, all you need to do is add great content on a regular basis to start generating web traffic organically.
If you need endless ideas for posting content on your site, then subscribe to our FREE email training series on growing your business with content marketing here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is addressed in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read more, click on the link below:
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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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