Welcome to Part Four of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new visitors automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part 1, 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 web site, all you have to do to automatically begin bringing new traffic is post web content on a regular basis!)
In Part 2, we discuss the setup phase. We help you understand the best way to get started 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 site is built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part Three, we look at the configuration phase of this blueprint.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) 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 website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section, we will show you how to set up various WordPress plugins that can drive traffic automatically to your website or blog simply by posting web content.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic Generation
Depending on which expert you talk to, you could end up investing 1-2 hours every day (or more) promoting your business on social media.
Many businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are advising. If you are spending hours checking LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter in addition to researching and writing articles for your blog or website, how does anything else in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours simply keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners 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 make sales in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted in 2012 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 (most of the other businesses surveyed that used 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 figures would most likely be even 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.
(Businesses are spending more time marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse)
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 equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited budget, time, and resources 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 media websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These sites often will make decisions that can significantly affect your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other websites.
Automating systems and process to save time is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increased availability of hundreds of new channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited budget, time, and resources. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels do you focus more efforts, time, and your budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring the benefits of building content on your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating The Web Traffic Generation With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that allows you to automate your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this strategy, 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 online marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should focus more time, budget, and your efforts 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 recommend staying away from all black hat sites, software, strategies, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of companies like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not have to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this article 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 frequented by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that most small business owners lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, time, and resources.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to marketing channels one at a time is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose a smarter, time-saving approach like the one shown below 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 once, and automate your content distribution to all other channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social services and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) to other blogs and web properties using RSS
- Automatically import content (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 website or blog as explained in Part 2. Then, expertly configure things as explained in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you can then automate the process with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a few traffic-generating plugins that can help:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically via RSS to other sites
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn 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 many useful functions.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part 3 …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack – Publicize)
Configure this section to share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Share your posts on several social accounts.)
After all of the plugin and account settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize options in your Publish box.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your content is automatically syndicated online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides an automated and hands-free way to create more exposure for your content online on social media sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting function that lets your site users engage with your website, post comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature using third-party commenting plugins that integrate your comments with social media, helping to spread and share your content online.
For example, using a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website or blog. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like ability to use keywords in the name, backlinks, the ability to add twitter usernames to comments, and social enticements for sharing your content. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which they can choose to include with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv Pro version can help attract more comments and traffic and create more user engagement on your website or blog.)
To learn more about this plugin, visit the plugin site:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a WordPress plugin that allows you to syndicate and drip-feed content, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate content to over 30 social sites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to over 30 traffic-generating sites, including:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Linkagogo, Kippt, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Blogger, Overblog, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
Go here for more information about using this powerful plugin: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get actionable information about your content distribution efforts), we have created a comprehensive article where we explore over 30 social media tracking tools that are worth knowing about. For more details, go here:
The above are just some 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: Content Syndication Phase – Summary
Once your website or blog and plugins have been set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then to automatically begin bringing new traffic is publish web content regularly.
If you need great content ideas for your web site, we recommend subscribing to our email training series here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is covered in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part 4
To keep reading this article, click here:
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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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