Welcome to Part Four of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to drive traffic automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part One, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is publish content consistently to automatically start generating traffic!)
In Part Two, we focus on the setup phase. We explain 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 a WordPress site on your domain)
In Part 3, we discussed configuring WordPress.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section of the article series, we discuss ways to automate traffic to your website using a number of plugins.
Why Automating Your Traffic Generation Makes Sense
Depending on which marketing guru you get your advice from, you could end up spending an hour or two per day (or more) promoting your business on social media.
Most businesses simply 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 marketing experts are prescribing. If you are spending most of your time posting updates on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter in addition to planning 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 just keeping their businesses up and running. Image source: NFIB)
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 sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and make sales in order to survive.
A study of small businesses done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent at least 6 hours each week on social media (the rest 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 conducted today, the numbers would most likely be 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 each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time promoting and marketing themselves online in order to compete and survive, this leaves 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 promoting and marketing your business on various social websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. These sites can make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other sites.
Investing in automation to leverage time is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the availability of many new channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited resources, marketing budget, and time. For example:
- Which channels do you focus more efforts, budget, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that lets you automate the web traffic generation 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 costs,
- Determine which channels you should invest more of your time, efforts, and your budget on,
- Invest most of your efforts building your own asset instead of someone else’s 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 websites, software, techniques, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of services like Google, Facebook, Pinterest, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not have to involve using black hat techniques!)
The focus of this article series is not to manipulate online services or bypass 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 that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen in the previous section how many business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, time, and resources.
So, instead of posting content to different services one by one, which can be extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to different channels can be very time-consuming!)
Why not choose this one 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 the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media services and social 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your site as shown in Part 2. Then, expertly configure your site settings as explained in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then connect all of the dots using 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 Automation Blueprint – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a number of plugins that can be used to:
- Post content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content via RSS to other sites
Jetpack by WordPress.com
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+, 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 loads of useful functions.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (as described in Part Three.) …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack – Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts automatically on various social accounts.)
After configuring all of the plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize options appear in the publishing area.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it will be automatically distributed online.)
Visit the plugin site for more information about using this great plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting feature that allows your site users to engage with your website, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content as part of an online community.
You can expand the WordPress built-in commenting feature with 3rd-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments with social media, helping to spread and share your content online.
For example, a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they +1, tweet, or like your post. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they type their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included with their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your web site.)
Visit this site to learn more about the benefits of using this great plugin:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – Content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin that allows you to automatically drip-feed content to dozens of traffic-generating platforms, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed your content to many authority sites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to many traffic-generating sites, like:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Linkagogo, Plurk, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blogger, Sett, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
Go here 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 distribution efforts), we have written a comprehensive article about social media measurement tools and technologies that are worth checking out and knowing about. Go here to learn more:
The above are just some examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating 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 Blueprint: Automated Content Distribution Process – Summary
Once you have your website or blog and plugins set up and expertly configured, all you then need to do is add new content consistently to drive web traffic organically.
If you need great content ideas for your website or blog, we recommend subscribing to our email training series here:
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 article in our WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Four
To keep reading this article, click here:
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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