Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to automate traffic to your site using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to automatically attract web traffic is publish web content regularly!)
In Part 2, we looked at critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In Part Three, we discussed the configuration phase of the automation process.
Here, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 you will configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section of the series, we discuss ways to automate traffic generation using various plugins.
Why Automate The Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on who you talk to, you could find yourself trying to spend an hour or more a day promoting your business on social media in addition to managing your business, your content and your web presence.
Most small businesses simply lack the time, resources and budget to run a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are advising. If you spent most of your time checking Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook in addition to researching and writing articles for your website or blog, how would anything else in your business ever get done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small businesses spend their time. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many business owners spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all 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 usage of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was done today, the numbers would most likely be higher.
- More than half of all small businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more creating 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 source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time marketing and promoting themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budget, resources, and time 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 sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. These companies can and will make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building content 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 business automation to save time is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increasing availability of hundreds of new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited budget, time, and resources. For example:
- Which channels should you focus more of your efforts, time, and budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on your own website?
- 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 for automating 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 web marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more of your time, efforts, and budget 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 recommend avoiding black hat sites, strategies, solutions, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of companies like YouTube, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not need to involve the use of black hat methods!)
What we are focusing here is not to manipulate online services or flaunt their terms of service, but to show you how to be smart with your limited resources and automate your content distribution in order to 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
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, many small business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts recommend. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to services one at a time is very time-consuming!)
Why not use a smarter, time-saving approach 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 one-time, and automate the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media channels and 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 get all this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as described in Part 2. Then, get everything configured as described in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you then automate the content distribution using plugins such as the ones discussed below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a look now at some WordPress plugins that can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically via RSS to other web properties
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus 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 loads of great functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (set up in Part Three.) …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack – Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Share your posts automatically on several social media sites.)
After all account and plugin settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize options show in the publishing box.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it will be automatically distributed online.)
Visit this site to learn more about the benefits of using this plugin: Jetpack WordPress Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting function allows your blog readers to interact with your web site, post new comments, reply to other users and engage with your content.
You can expand the WordPress built-in commenting feature using a third-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates your comments with social media, helping to spread and share them around.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they like, plus1, or tweet your content. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they enter their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can choose to include at the bottom of their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can help attract more comments and visitors and improve user engagement on your website.)
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, go here:
Social Link Machine
(Social Link Machine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin that allows you to automatically drip-feed content to dozens of authority sites, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed content automatically to many traffic-generating platforms)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to many traffic-generating sites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Delicious, Linkagogo, Instapaper, Zotero, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Overblog, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
Visit the plugin site to learn more about this plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get actionable information about your content marketing efforts), we have written a detailed article about social media tracking tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives. Go here to learn more about this:
The above are just a few examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating and sharing 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 System: Content Sharing Stage – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do is add web content regularly to automatically begin bringing traffic.
If you need great content ideas for your site, we recommend subscribing 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 can be improved. This step is covered in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read the rest of this article series, click on the link below:
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