Welcome to Part Four of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to create an automated traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part 1 of this article series, we described the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is add great content on a regular basis to automatically start generating more traffic!)
In Part Two, we look at critical setup decisions. We help 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 website, and what to do if your website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we focused on the configuration phase.
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 all the settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this article, we discuss ways to automate traffic to your website using various WordPress plugins.
Why You Should Consider Automating Your Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which marketing experts you listen to, you could end up spending 1-2 hours or more every day posting content on social media, as well as managing your business, your content and your web presence.
Many businesses simply lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are prescribing. If you spent half a day checking Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook in addition to planning and writing content for your blog or website, how could you get anything in your business done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time just keeping their businesses up and running. Image source: NFIB)
Many business owners spend most of their time simply 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 make sales in order to survive.
Research done in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent around six hours per week on social media (the other half of businesses surveyed that used 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 survey was conducted today, the numbers would probably be even 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 spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend more time marketing and promoting themselves online in order to compete and survive, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other areas …
(Businesses with limited budget, time, and resources and many business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These companies can and will make decisions that can significantly impact your business without prior warning. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on someone else’s real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other online properties.
Investing in automation to save time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increasing availability of hundreds of new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited time, marketing budgets, and resources. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels do you focus more efforts, time, and budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not own (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy for automating your web traffic generation 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 web marketing costs,
- Determine which 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 urge that you stay away from all black hat software, sites, strategies, and anything designed to “game” or violate the terms of service and policies of services like Pinterest, Facebook, Google.
(Web traffic automation doesn’t need to involve using black hat methods!)
What we are focusing here is not to manipulate web services or flaunt their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and increase your exposure online to sites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that many business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts advise. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limited time, resources, and budget.
So, instead of posting content to each different channel, which can be very time-consuming …
(Posting content to individual channels can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not use this strategy 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 marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social sites and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) automatically 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 WordPress site as explained in Part Two. Then, get it all configured as described in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you can then automate the process using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic System – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at a number of WordPress plugins that can:
- Syndicate content to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically to other online properties via RSS feeds
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, GooglePlus 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 useful features.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part Three …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize feature)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your content to several social media networks.)
After configuring all plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details show in your publishing box.)
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 posts are published, they are automatically shared online.)
This is a hands-free way to create more exposure online for your content on social networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress commenting system lets your visitors interact with your site, post new comments, reply to other users and engage with your content as part of an online community.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature with a number of 3rd-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can improve user engagement on your website or blog. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like the ability to add twitter usernames to comments, social enticements for content sharing, using keywords in the username, and search-indexable backlinks. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they are entering their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which can be included with their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your web site.)
Visit this website to learn more about this plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a WordPress plugin that allows you to drip-feed your content to many social sites, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed your content automatically to dozens of authority sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to dozens of social websites, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Delicious, Folkd, Plurk, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Blogger, Rebel Mouse, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
To learn more about the benefits of using this plugin, visit the plugin site: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get actionable information about your content distribution campaigns), we have written a comprehensive article about social media monitoring tools that will help you keep track of online trends, monitor competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that could affect your business, etc, see what online conversations are taking place that could affect your business,etc. To learn more, go here:
The above are just a few 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 Automation Blueprint: Content Distribution Process – Summary
Once you have your website or blog and plugins configured and fully set up, all you then need to do to attract traffic is add fresh content consistently.
We have created a complete email course aimed at helping you never run out of great content for your site:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as can be improved. This step is covered in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read the rest of this article, click here:
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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