Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to create an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part One, we 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 is post new content regularly to attract web traffic!)
In Part Two, we looked at critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we focus on configuring WordPress.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three we explain how to configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this section of the article series, we discuss ways to automate traffic generation with different plugins.
Why Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which expert you get your advice from, you could end up spending 1-2 hours or more every day promoting your business on social media.
Most small businesses simply lack the time, 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 recommend. If you were to spend all of your time posting updates on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook in addition to researching and writing articles for your website or blog, how would you get anything else in your business done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small business owners spend their time. Source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and make sales in order to survive.
Research done by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent at least six 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 survey was conducted today, the numbers would probably be even higher.
- More than half of all small businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more creating a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media was their most time-consuming online activity.
(Businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse)
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 time, budgets, and resources and many business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or StumbleUpon. These sites can make decisions that affect your business without consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building content on someone else’s asset? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other online accounts.
Automating business systems and processes to leverage time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the availability of so many new channels for marketing and promoting a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited budgets, resources, and time. For example:
- Which marketing channels should you invest more time, efforts, 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, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring the benefits of building content on your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that allows you to automate your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more efforts, budget, and time on,
- Invest most of your time and 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 strongly recommend avoiding black hat solutions, websites, strategies, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of sites like Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t need to involve using black hat methods!)
The purpose of this series of articles is to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and increase your exposure online to websites 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 businesses 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 be strategic with your limited budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of posting content to each different marketing channel, which can be extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to individual marketing channels can be extremely 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 your content distribution to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media sites and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) automatically 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 explained in Part Two. Then, expertly configure it as shown in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you then connect all of the dots using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some traffic-generating plugins that can be used to:
- Post content to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically via RSS to other websites
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 great features.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (set up in Part 3.) …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Publicize your content automatically to several social networks.)
After all of the account and plugin settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings in your post publishing box.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new content is automatically distributed online.)
Visit the plugin website to learn more about this plugin: Jetpack by WordPress.com
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting system that allows your site users to interact with your website, post comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions as part of a community.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature using a 3rd-party plugin that integrates with social media, helping to spread and share your content around.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they like, plus1, or tweet your post. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they are typing their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can include at the bottom of their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website or blog.)
To learn more about the benefits of using this great plugin, visit this website:
Social Link Machine
(Social Link Machine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social LinkMachine is a plugin that allows you to syndicate and drip-feed content, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed content automatically to dozens of online platforms)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to many online sites, such as:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Linkagogo, Kippt, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Overblog, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: 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 tracking (in order to get actionable information about your content marketing campaigns), we have written a detailed article on social media measurement tools and technologies that are worth checking out and knowing about. Go here to learn more:
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 System: Content Syndication Phase – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site and plugins configured and set up, all you have to do then is add content regularly to automatically start generating web traffic.
We have created a complete email email-based training course designed to help you never run out of content ideas for your website:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is addressed in the next article in the WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read more, click here:
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