Welcome to Part Four of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic generating machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part One of this article series, we describe the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to automatically attract new traffic is add web content regularly!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase. 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 website, and what to do if your existing website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress 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 Three you will configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this article, we discuss ways to automate the traffic system using a number of plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic Generation
Depending on which expert you listen to, you could find yourself spending a couple of hours or more every day posting content on social media.
Many small businesses lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise doing. If you are spending half your day posting updates on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing articles for your website or blog, how will you get anything in your business done?
(Small businesses spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses done by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent around six hours each week on social media (the other half 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 done 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 consumed the most time online.
(Businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to prioritize their time on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budget, resources, and time and many different business areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social media websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These sites often will make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without prior warning. Why invest so much time and effort building content on someone else’s asset? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other websites.
Investing in automation to save time is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the availability of so many new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited resources, marketing budgets, and time. For example:
- Which of these channels should you invest more of your 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 the benefits of building content on your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote 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 method for automating the web traffic generation with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more time, efforts, and budget 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 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 solutions, sites, methods, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the policies and terms of service of services like YouTube, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not need to involve using black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this series of articles is not to manipulate online 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 get additional exposure online from sites frequented by your target audience.
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 experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, time, and resources.
So, instead of posting content to each different channel, which is extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels one by one 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 content once, and automate the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media sites and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content to other blogs and online 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress site as explained in Part Two. Then, get it configured as shown in Part Three. After all 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 Automation Blueprint – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some examples of WordPress plugins that can help:
- Distribute content to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Distribute 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, Tumblr, Twitter, GooglePlus, LinkedIn 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 great functions.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts on various 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 settings displays in the post publishing section.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically get shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new posts are automatically syndicated online.)
Go here to learn more about this plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress native commenting feature allows your site users to interact with your website, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions as part of a social community.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature using a number of 3rd-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content online.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your web site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like social enticements for content-sharing, adding twitter handles to comments, search-indexable backlinks, using keywords in the username. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they are typing their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included below their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your web site.)
Visit this site to learn more about the benefits of this powerful plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a WordPress plugin that allows you to automatically drip-feed content, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – drip-feed your content to over 30 authority sites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to over 30 traffic-generating websites, such as:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Linkagogo, Kippt, Reddit, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
Visit this website for more details about the benefits of using this plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get useful information about your content marketing campaigns), go here to learn about social media tracking tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns:
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 Distribution Process – Summary
Once you have your website or blog and plugins expertly configured and set up, all you need to do then is post content on a consistent basis to begin attracting new traffic.
If you need help coming up with topics for posting content on your web site, then subscribe to our email training series here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as you can. This step is explained in the next article in our WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read the rest of this article series, click here:
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
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