Welcome to Part Four of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to drive new visitors automatically to your website using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part 1, we provide an overview of the traffic automation process, and explain 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 to automatically begin attracting web traffic is post fresh content on a consistent basis!)
In Part 2, we discuss critical setup decisions. 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 site, and what to do if your site is built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we discussed important configuration decisions.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you will configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this section of the article series, we discuss ways to automate traffic to your website using a number of WordPress plugins.
Why Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which marketing gurus you get your advice from, you could end up trying to spend 1-2 hours every day (or more) posting content on social media.
Most small businesses simply lack the time, resources and financial means to employ the services of a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are recommending. If you are spending hours posting updates on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook in addition to writing content for your website or blog, how will you get anything else in your business done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: NFIB)
Small business owners spend most of their time just keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
A study of small businesses done by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent around six hours per week on social media (the rest spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This use of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was done today, the numbers would probably be 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 was their most time-consuming online activity.
(Small businesses are spending more time marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend more time marketing and promoting themselves online in order to compete and survive, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and marketing budgets and many areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social media sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or StumbleUpon. These sites can and will make decisions that can significantly impact your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much effort and time building content on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can have complete control of your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other online properties.
Investing in business automation to leverage time is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited resources, marketing budget, and time. For example:
- Which marketing channels should you invest more of your budget, time, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that belong to other people (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting 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 we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that allows you to automate the traffic generation with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should focus more of your time, budget, and your efforts 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 urge that you stay away from all black hat software, sites, techniques, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of services like Google, YouTube, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not require the use of black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing here is not to game online services or flaunt their terms of service, but to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and increase your exposure online to websites that your target audience frequents.
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 using this approach …
(Posting content to different marketing channels one at a time can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose this approach 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 one-time, and automate the distribution of your content to all other services.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media services and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) 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 site as shown in Part Two. Then, configure everything as shown in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you can then automate the process using plugins such as the ones listed below.
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 examples of traffic-generation plugins that can help:
- Syndicate content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content via RSS feeds to other blogs
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, 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 many great functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part 3 …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Distribute your content to several social networks.)
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 Publish section.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically get shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they are automatically distributed online.)
To learn more about using this plugin, visit the plugin website: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting system allows your blog readers to interact with your website or blog, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature with third-party commenting plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like the ability to add twitter handles to comments, social enticements for content-sharing, using keywords in the username, and backlinks. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they enter their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your site.)
Go here for more information about using this plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that lets you automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate your content to dozens of online platforms)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to dozens of traffic-generating platforms, like:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Folkd, Kippt, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Rebel Mouse, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
Visit the plugin site for more information about using this handy plugin: Social Link Machine
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 detailed article where we explore a number of social media tracking tools and technologies that will help you keep track of online trends, monitor competitor activity, see what online conversations are taking place that can affect your business, etc, see what online conversations are taking place that could affect your business,etc. For more details, go here:
The above are just some examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating and syndicating 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 your site and plugins have been set up and configured, all you need to do to automatically drive more traffic is add fresh content regularly.
We have created an entire email training series designed to help you come up with unlimited content ideas for your website or blog:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as can be improved. This step is addressed in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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