Welcome to Part Four of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to turn a site into an automated traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part One, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to automatically begin bringing new web traffic is publish web content regularly!)
In Part 2, we discuss the setup phase. We explain the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing website was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part 3, we focus on important configuration decisions.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section of the series, we will show you how to set up various WordPress plugins that can drive traffic automatically to your site.
Why Automate The Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which expert you listen to, you could find yourself trying to spend an hour or more each day posting content on social media in addition to running your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Most business owners 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 were to spend all of your time checking Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn in addition to writing content for your blog or website, how would anything else in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: NFIB)
Many business owners spend most of their time just 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.
Research done by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent at least 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 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 to create a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media consumed the most time online.
(Small businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and budget and many areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on a number of social media sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or StumbleUpon. These sites often will make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much effort and time building a business 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.
Automating processes to leverage time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the availability of so many new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited time, resources, and marketing budget. For example:
- Which of these channels do you invest more of your efforts, budget, and your time 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 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 Your Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that allows you to 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 online marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more time, budget, and your 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 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 that you stay away from all black hat strategies, sites, tools, and anything designed to “game” or violate the policies and terms of service of sites like Facebook, Google, YouTube, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not require the use of black hat techniques!)
The focus of this article 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 efforts, and increase your exposure online to websites visited 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, most business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to different channels is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not use a smarter, time-saving strategy 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 once, and automate the distribution of your content to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media services and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content automatically 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 website as shown in Part 2. Then, expertly configure things as described in Part 3. After all this is in place, you then automate your content distribution with plugins like the ones listed in the next section.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a look now at some WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Post content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content to other sites via RSS
Jetpack by WordPress.com
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus 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 great functions.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
Configure this section to share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Publicize your posts automatically to several social media sites.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details appear in your post publishing area.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically get shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it is automatically syndicated online.)
Visit the plugin website for more details about this plugin: Jetpack by WordPress.com
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting system lets your site users engage with your site, post comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions as part of a social community.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature using a 3rd-party commenting plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can 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 user name, SEO backlinks, social enticements for sharing content, and adding twitter names to comments. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they type their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which can be included below their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your site.)
Go here to learn more about the benefits of this plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin that lets you automatically syndicate your content to many authority sites, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed content automatically to dozens of online sites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to over 30 social sites, such as:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Diigo, Instapaper, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
Go here for more details about the benefits of using this great plugin: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get useful information about your content distribution campaigns), we have written a detailed article on social media tracking tools that are worth checking out and knowing about. Go here to learn more:
The above are just some examples of the many content distribution plugins that WordPress makes available.
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: Content Distribution Phase – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been configured and fully set up, all you then have to do to drive traffic is publish great content consistently.
We have created an entire email email-based training course designed to help you come up with limitless content for your website or blog:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is explained in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read more, click on the link below:
***
"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)
***