Welcome to Part Four of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic machine using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part One, we provide an overview of the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is add great content on a regular basis to automatically start driving traffic!)
In Part Two, we look at critical setup decisions. We help you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing site is built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we looked at the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure all the settings that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this step, we will show you how to set up various plugins that can drive new traffic automatically to your website or blog as you begin adding fresh content on a consistent basis.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which marketing expert you talk to, you could end up spending a couple of hours or more each day posting content on social media, as well as managing your business, your content and your web presence.
Many business owners lack the time, human 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 are prescribing. If you are spending hours posting updates on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing articles for your blog or website, how can anything in your business get done?
(Keeping a business up and running is how most small businesses spend their working hours. Source: NFIB)
Small business owners 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 grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses done by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent six or more 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 most likely be higher.
- More than half of all small 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 are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend more time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to prioritize their time on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budget, time, and resources and many different business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. These companies can and will make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without prior notification. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can control your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other sites.
Automating systems and process to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increased availability of so many new channels for promoting and marketing a business online creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited marketing budgets, resources, and time. For example:
- Which of these channels do you focus more of your time, budget, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, 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-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that lets you automate the traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this method, 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 channels you should invest more of your time, budget, and efforts on,
- Invest most of your time 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 sites, tools, techniques, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of companies like Facebook, YouTube, Google, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not require using black hat techniques!)
The focus of this article series is 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 get additional exposure online from 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, many small business owners 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 time, budget, and resources.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different services individually can be very time-consuming!)
Why not choose this one 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 marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media channels and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) 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, configure it as described in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you can then automate your content distribution with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic System – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at a few WordPress plugins that can help:
- Syndicate content to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content to other online properties via RSS
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+ and more as soon as you publish your content using a plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many useful functions.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (as described in Part Three.) …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
Configure this section to share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Publicize your posts automatically to several social networks.)
After all settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings appear in your post publishing area.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically be shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they are automatically syndicated online.)
This is a hands-free way to create more exposure online for your content on social websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting system allows your site users to interact with your web site, post new comments, reply to other users and engage with your content as part of an online community.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature using a third-party plugin that integrates your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help attract more comments and improve user engagement on your website. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like ability to use keywords in the name, the ability to add twitter usernames to comments, SEO backlinks, and social enticements for content-sharing. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they are typing their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included at the bottom of their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can help attract more comments and web traffic and improve user engagement on your website.)
Go here to learn more about using this plugin:
Social Link Machine
(Social LinkMachine – Content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that lets you drip-feed your content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – drip-feed content to over 30 online platforms)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to over 30 online websites, including:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Diigo, Kippt, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, visit this site: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get actionable information about your content marketing efforts), we have created a comprehensive article where we explore over 30 social media monitoring tools that are worth knowing about. More information:
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: Automated Content Syndication Phase – Summary
Once you have your site and plugins set up and configured, all you have to do is publish great content regularly to start attracting web traffic.
If you need help coming up with ideas for content that you can post on your web site, we recommend subscribing to our email training series on growing your business online with content marketing here:
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 section of the series.
This is the end of Section Four
To keep reading about this topic, click on the link below:
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