Welcome to Part Four of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to drive visitors automatically to your website using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part One of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to generate more traffic is add fresh content consistently!)
In Part Two, we look at the setup phase of the traffic automation blueprint. We explain the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In Part Three, we discuss the configuration phase.
Here, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In this article, we explain how to set up various plugins that can drive new visitors automatically to your site.
Why You Should Automate Your Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which online marketing gurus you listen to, you could find yourself investing a couple of hours or more each day posting content on social media.
Most businesses lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts advise. If you were to spend hours posting updates on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook in addition to planning and writing content for your blog or website, how would you get anything else in your business done?
(Keeping their business up and running is how most small businesses spend their time. Image source: NFIB)
Many business owners spend most of their working hours trying to keep their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent around 6 hours each week on social media (the other half of businesses surveyed using 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 done today, the numbers would probably be even 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 consumed the most time online.
(Businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend more time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, marketing budgets, and time and many different business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on various social media sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. These sites can and will make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on someone else’s asset? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other websites.
Automating systems and process to save time is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited time, marketing budget, and resources. For example:
- Which marketing channels should you focus more of your efforts, budget, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that lets you automate your traffic-getting 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 channels,
- Determine which channels you should focus more of your budget, efforts, and your time on,
- Invest most of your 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 you to avoid using black hat websites, software, methods, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the terms of service and policies of sites like Facebook, Pinterest, Google, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t have to involve the use of black hat methods!)
The purpose 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 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, most business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of posting content to each different channel, which can be very time-consuming …
(Posting content to individual channels is 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 one-time, and automate the distribution of your content to all other services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media services and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) automatically to other blogs and online 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 get all this done?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress website as explained in Part Two. Then, configure everything as explained in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then automate the content distribution with plugins such as the ones shown in the following section.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a look now at some plugins that can be used to:
- Post content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content via RSS to other web properties
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn 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 features.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to the 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 plugin – Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your posts to various social media networks.)
After all of the settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account details displays in the post publishing section.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it will be automatically distributed online.)
For more details about using this plugin, go here: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress native commenting feature lets your visitors interact with your website, post comments, reply to other users and engage with your content as part of a social community.
You can expand the WordPress built-in commenting feature with a number of third-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, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they tweet, like, or +1 your content. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included with their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website or blog.)
For more details about this plugin, visit the plugin site:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a WordPress plugin that lets you automatically drip-feed your content, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate your content to over 30 authority sites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to over 30 traffic-generating sites, like:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Diigo, Instapaper, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
Go here for more details about using this powerful plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get actionable information about your content marketing efforts), we have created a comprehensive article listing over 30 social media measurement tools that you may want to check out. To learn more, go here:
The above are just some 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 Automation System: Automated Content Distribution Stage – Summary
Once your site and plugins have been set up and configured, all you need to do then to begin attracting more web traffic is post new content regularly.
We have created a complete email series designed to help you never run out of content ideas for your web site:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is covered in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read more, click here:
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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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