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.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part One, we described the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is publish content on a consistent basis to automatically start generating more traffic!)
In Part 2, we focus on the setup phase. We explain 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 website, and what to do if your website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we discuss the configuration phase.
Here, we configure all the settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 we explain how to configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this article, we discuss ways to automate the traffic-generation process using various WordPress plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate The Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which marketing experts you talk to, you could find yourself trying to spend 1-2 hours or more every day posting content on social media.
Most businesses simply lack the time, human resources and budget to employ the services of a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are prescribing. If you are spending half your day checking Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter in addition to writing content for your blog or website, how will you get anything else in your business done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their working hours just keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses done in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent around six hours per 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 was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was conducted today, the figures 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 the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Small businesses are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, budget, and time and many different business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. These companies often will make decisions that can significantly impact your business without prior notification. Why invest so much effort and time building content on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can control your own real estate and post your content automatically to other sites.
Automating business processes to save time is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited resources, budgets, and time. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels should you focus 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, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring 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 The Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that allows you to automate your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more of your efforts, time, 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 strongly recommend avoiding black hat websites, methods, solutions, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of services like Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not require the use of black hat methods!)
The purpose of this article is to show you how to be smart with your limited resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from websites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that many small businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of posting content to different marketing channels individually, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to marketing channels one at a time can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose a smarter, time-saving strategy 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 content once, and automate your content distribution to all other channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content automatically to other blogs and web properties using RSS
- Import content automatically (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 website or blog as explained in Part 2. Then, get it configured as shown in Part 3. After all this is in place, you can then automate various processes using plugins like 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 brief look at a number of traffic-generation plugins that can help to:
- Syndicate content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically via RSS feeds to other blogs
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+ and more as soon as you publish new content using a 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 the 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 …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize feature)
Configure this section to share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your content automatically on several social media accounts.)
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 options in the post publishing box.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your post will be automatically syndicated online.)
Go here for more details about this great plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress built-in commenting feature lets your site users engage with your web site, post new comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature using a number of 3rd-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments with social media, helping to spread and share them around.
For example, a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like adding twitter names to comments, backlinks, social enticements for content-sharing, and ability to use keywords in the username. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they are typing their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which they can include at the bottom of their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website or blog.)
To learn more about this powerful plugin, visit this site:
Social LinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
SocialLinkMachine is a WordPress plugin that lets you drip-feed content, build backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed your content to over 30 online platforms)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to many online sites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Plurk, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Rebel Mouse, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
Go here to learn more about this plugin: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get useful information about your content distribution campaigns), we have written a comprehensive article where we explore several social media tracking tools and technologies that you may want to check out. More information:
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 Blueprint: Automated Content Sharing Phase – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been fully set up and configured, all you have to do to start generating new traffic is post web content on a regular basis.
We have created a complete email series aimed at helping you never run out of content ideas for your web site:
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 Four
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