Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to turn a website into an automated web traffic machine 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 site is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is post content consistently to attract new traffic!)
In Part Two, we focus on critical setup decisions. We help you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we looked at important configuration decisions.
In this step, we configure all the settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this section of the series, we explain how to set up various WordPress plugins that can help drive web traffic automatically to your website.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate The Traffic Generation
Depending on which marketing experts you talk to, you could end up trying to spend a couple of hours or more every day promoting your business on social media.
Most small businesses simply lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts prescribe. If you spent hours checking Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn in addition to planning and writing articles for your website or blog, how could you get anything else in your business done?
(Small businesses spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many businesses spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
Marketing research done 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 done today, the figures would most likely be significantly 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 consumed the most time online.
(Businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend more 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 areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, marketing budgets, 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 marketing and promoting your business on various social media websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. These sites can and will make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without prior notification. Why invest so much effort and time building content on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can have complete control of your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Automating business systems and processes to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increasing availability of hundreds of new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited resources, budget, and time. For example:
- Which of these channels should you invest more budget, time, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting 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 Generation Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method for automating the traffic generation 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 web marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more time, efforts, and budget on,
- Invest most of your time 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 recommend avoiding black hat techniques, websites, software, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of sites like Facebook, YouTube, Google, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not need to involve using black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this series of articles is not to manipulate online services or break their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites frequented by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that most businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited resources, budget, and time.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels is very time-consuming!)
Why not use a smarter, time-saving approach like 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 media channels and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) to other blogs and online 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 this done?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as described in Part 2. Then, get everything configured as described in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you can then automate your content distribution with plugins such as the ones listed in the section below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic System – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some traffic-generating plugins that can help:
- Syndicate content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content via RSS to other online properties
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, 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 many useful features.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack – Publicize)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Publicize your content to various social sites.)
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 details appear in the publishing box.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically get shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new posts are automatically distributed online.)
Visit this website to learn more about this handy plugin: Jetpack WordPress Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress commenting feature allows your visitors to interact with your site, post new comments, reply to other users and engage with your content as part of a community.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature using a 3rd-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread them online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they +1, like, or tweet your post. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they enter their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can include with their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website or blog.)
To learn more about this powerful plugin, go here:
Social LinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – Content distribution plugin for WordPress)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin that lets you automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed content automatically to dozens of traffic-generating websites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to many traffic-generating websites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Folkd, Plurk, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
To learn more about this plugin, go here: 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 comprehensive article about social media tracking tools and technologies that are worth knowing about. Go here to learn more about this:
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 Blueprint: Automated Content Distribution Stage – Summary
Once your site and plugins have been set up and configured, all you then need to do to automatically drive traffic is post new content regularly.
We have created a complete email email-based training course aimed at helping you never run out of content ideas for your website:
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 System series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read more, click on the link below:
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"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie
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