Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is post web content on a consistent basis to begin bringing traffic!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part Three, we looked at important configuration decisions.
Here, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, we will look at ways to automate traffic generation using plugins.
Why Automate The Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on which marketing gurus you listen to, you could find yourself trying to spend 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.
Most businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to employ the services of a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are prescribing. If you are spending all of your time posting updates on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn in addition to writing articles for your blog or website, how does anything else in your business get done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small business owners spend their working hours. Source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
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 also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
Research done by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent 6 or more hours each 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 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 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 source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to focus their time on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, marketing budgets, and time and many different areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on various social media sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. These companies can and will make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without prior warning. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on someone else’s asset? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can control your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other online accounts.
Automating business systems and processes to save time is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited time, marketing budget, and resources. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels do you focus more time, budget, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not own (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that lets you automate the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest 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 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 strongly urge that you stay away from all black hat sites, software, strategies, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of sites like Twitter, Facebook, Google.
(Web traffic automation doesn’t 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 so you can leverage your time and marketing 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 that many businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limited budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of posting content to different marketing channels, which can be extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to different channels is 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 content one-time, and automate the distribution of your content to all other services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your site as described in Part 2. Then, configure everything as shown in Part 3. After all this is in place, you then automate the process 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 Blueprint – Plugins
Let’s take a look now at some traffic-generating plugins that can be used to:
- Syndicate content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content via RSS feeds to other blogs
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ 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 great features.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack – Publicize)
You can share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Distribute your content to various social media sites.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings in the post publishing area.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically get shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your post is automatically syndicated online.)
This is an automated and hands-free way to get more exposure online for your content on social websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting function lets your visitors interact with your web site, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content as part of an online community.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature with a 3rd-party commenting plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates with social media, helping to spread and share them online.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your website. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like using keywords in the username, adding twitter usernames to comments, social enticements for content sharing, and search-indexable backlinks. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they are entering their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which they can choose to include below their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv Premium version can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your site.)
To learn more about the benefits of using this WordPress plugin, go here:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that allows you to automatically syndicate your content, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed your content to over 30 online websites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to over 30 authority websites, like:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Plurk, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
Visit this website to learn more about the benefits of using this plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get actionable information about your content distribution efforts), we have written a detailed article about social media measurement tools that you may want to check out here:
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 System: Automated Content Distribution Phase – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then is publish new content on a regular basis to attract new traffic organically.
If you need great content ideas for your website or blog, then subscribe to our FREE email training series on 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 section of the series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read more, 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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