Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part One, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is add great content on a regular basis to attract new traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at critical setup decisions. We explained 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 site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we look at the configuration phase.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you will configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part 4, we explain how to set up various plugins that can drive web traffic automatically to your website just by publishing content on a regular basis.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which online marketing guru you listen to, you could end up investing 1-2 hours or more every day posting content on social media, as well as managing your business, your content and your web presence.
Most small business owners simply lack the time, human 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 advising. If you spend all of your time posting updates on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing content for your blog or website, how will you get anything in your business done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: NFIB)
Many businesses spend most of their time just keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
Marketing research done by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent around 6 hours per week on social media (the rest 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 most likely 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 the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of 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 areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, budget, 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 marketing and promoting your business on a number of social sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These companies often will make decisions that impact your business without prior warning. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other sites.
Automating systems and process to leverage time is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increasing availability of hundreds of new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited marketing budgets, resources, and time. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels should you invest more of your efforts, time, and your budget 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 promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy for automating the traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this formula, 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 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 urge you to avoid using black hat sites, tools, techniques, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t require using black hat techniques!)
The focus of this article series is not to manipulate online services or break their terms of service, but to show you how to be smart with your limited resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and increase your exposure online to sites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that many businesses 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 be strategic with your limited budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to services individually can be very time-consuming!)
Why not use this time-saving method 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 marketing channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social services 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress site as shown in Part Two. Then, get it all configured as described in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then automate these processes with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic System – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at some examples of WordPress plugins that can:
- Syndicate content to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically to other blogs via RSS
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and more as soon as you publish your content using a WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many useful features.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (set up in Part Three.) …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
Configure this section to share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your content automatically to various social media sites.)
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 Publish section.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically get shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they will be automatically syndicated online.)
Go here to learn more about using this plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress built-in commenting function lets your visitors interact with your web site, post new comments, reply to other users and engage with your content.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature with a third-party plugin that integrates with social media, helping to spread and share them online.
For example, a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like search-indexable backlinks, social enticements for sharing your content, using keywords in the username, and the ability to add twitter usernames to comments. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they enter their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can choose to include below their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website.)
Visit the plugin site to learn more about this plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a plugin that allows you to drip-feed content to dozens of traffic-generating sites, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate your content to dozens of authority sites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to over 30 social sites, such as:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Folkd, Plurk, Reddit, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Rebel Mouse, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
Go here to learn more about the benefits of using this plugin: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get actionable information about your content marketing campaigns), we have written a comprehensive article on social media measurement tools that are worth checking out and knowing about. For more details, 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 System: Content Distribution Phase – Summary
Once your website or blog and plugins have been configured and fully set up, all you then have to do to begin attracting new traffic is post great content consistently.
If you need help coming up with ideas for content that you can post on your website or blog, then subscribe to our email training series on growing your business with content marketing 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 addressed in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Section 4
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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