Welcome to Part Four of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part One, we provide an overview of the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to begin bringing traffic is post great content on a regular basis!)
In Part Two, we discussed critical setup decisions. We helped you understand 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 site was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we looked at important configuration decisions.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 you will configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part 4, we discuss ways to automate your traffic with WordPress plugins.
Why You Should Consider Automating Your Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which business marketing gurus you talk to, you could find yourself trying to spend an hour or two (or more) every day posting content on social media.
Most small businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise doing. If you are spending most of your time checking Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn in addition to planning and writing articles for your website or blog, how will you get anything else in your business done?
(Keeping their business up and running is how most small businesses spend their working hours. Infographic: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many business owners spend most of their time just keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
Research done by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all small 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 numbers would probably be significantly 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 was their most time-consuming online activity.
(Businesses are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic 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 of a squeeze on businesses to prioritize their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and marketing budget and many different business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social websites, 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 impact your business without prior warning. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on someone else’s real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other sites.
Automating processes to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited time, budgets, and resources. For example:
- Which channels should you focus more of your efforts, time, and budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring the benefits of building content on 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 show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method for automating your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more of your efforts, time, and your budget on,
- Invest most of your time and 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 strategies, solutions, websites, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the terms of service and policies of companies like YouTube, Facebook, Google.
(Web traffic automation does not require using black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this article series is not to game online services or bypass their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and marketing efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites used 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 businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, time, and resources.
So, instead of using this approach …
(Posting content to different services one by one can be very time-consuming!)
Why not use this time-saving approach 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 sites and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content 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 site as described in Part Two. Then, expertly configure your site settings as described in Part Three. After all 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 Blueprint – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some examples of traffic-generating plugins that can:
- Distribute content to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically to other websites via RSS feeds
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, LinkedIn 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 many great functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part Three …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Share your posts on several social media networks.)
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 appear in your Publish section.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically get shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it will be automatically syndicated online.)
Jetpack provides you with a hands-free, automated way to create more exposure online for your content on social websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress native commenting feature lets your visitors interact with your site, post new comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions as part of a social community.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature using a 3rd-party 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 (Premium version) can help attract more comments and improve user engagement on your site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like adding twitter handles to comments, SEO backlinks, social enticements for content sharing, and using keywords in the user name. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they type their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your site.)
Visit this website to learn more about this plugin:
Social Link Machine
(Social LinkMachine – Content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a plugin that lets you syndicate your content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – drip-feed content automatically to many traffic-generating sites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to many authority platforms, including:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Instapaper, Reddit, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Sett, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, 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 written a comprehensive article on social media monitoring tools that you may want to check out. Go here to learn more:
The above are just some examples of the many content distribution plugins that WordPress makes available.
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 Sharing Stage – Summary
Once your website and plugins have been expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do then is publish new content consistently to drive more traffic organically.
We have created a complete email email-based training course designed to help you come up with limitless content ideas for posting to your website:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is explained in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Part Four
To keep reading about this topic, 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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