Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to turn your site into an automated traffic generating machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part One of this article series, we explained 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 to automatically begin bringing more web traffic is post great content consistently!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase of this blueprint. 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 site, and what to do if your existing website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In Part Three, we look at configuring the system.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you will configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section of the article series, you will learn how to set up various plugins that can bring web traffic automatically to your site.
Why You Should Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which marketing expert you talk to, you could end up spending a couple of hours each day (or more) posting content on social media while also managing your business, your content and your web presence.
Many small businesses simply lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise. If you were to spend most of your time posting updates on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter in addition to planning and writing content for your blog or website, how would anything in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours just keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many businesses spend most of their time trying to keep their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent six or more hours each week on social media (most of the other businesses surveyed using social media spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This usage of social media 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 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 marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend more time marketing and promoting themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited budgets, resources, and time and many business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on a number of social websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. These sites often will make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building content on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Automating systems and process to leverage time is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the availability of so many new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited time, resources, and marketing budgets. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you focus more of your budget, time, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not control (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting 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 Your Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that allows you to automate your web traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should focus more of your efforts, budget, and your time 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 urge you to avoid using black hat methods, sites, tools, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of services like Twitter, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t have to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this article series is not to game web services or flaunt their terms of service, but 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 websites 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, many small business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limited time, budget, and resources.
So, instead of posting content to each service, which can be extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to services individually is very time-consuming!)
Why not do 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 once, and automate the distribution of your content to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social services and 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your site as described in Part Two. Then, configure it as explained in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then automate your content distribution with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic System – Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at a few traffic-generation plugins that can:
- Syndicate content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content via RSS feeds to other web properties
Jetpack by WordPress.com
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, GooglePlus, 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 loads of useful features.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (as described in Part 3.) …
(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, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Publicize your posts to various social media networks.)
After configuring all of the account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings in the publishing area.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they will be automatically syndicated online.)
Visit this site to learn more about this great plugin: Jetpack by WordPress.com
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting feature lets your site users interact with your web site, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions as part of a social community.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature using third-party plugins that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content around.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they tweet, plus1, or like 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 can be included at the bottom of their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website or blog.)
Visit the plugin website to learn more about the benefits of this great plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – Content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social LinkMachine is a WordPress plugin that lets you syndicate and drip-feed your content to many authority platforms, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – drip-feed your content automatically to dozens of authority platforms)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to dozens of traffic-generating websites, including:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Kippt, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Rebel Mouse, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
Visit this website to learn more about this plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get actionable information about your content marketing 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 Syndication Phase – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site and plugins expertly configured and set up, all you have to do is publish fresh content on a regular basis to automatically drive web traffic.
We have created a complete email series designed to help you come up with endless content for your website or blog:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as you can. This step is addressed in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read the rest of this article series, 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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