Welcome to Part Four of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a website into an automated web traffic machine using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part 1 of this article series, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to automatically begin bringing more traffic is post great content regularly!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase. We helped you understand 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 was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we looked at the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure all the settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section of the article series, we explain how to set up various plugins that can drive web traffic automatically to your site.
Why Automate The Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on which marketing gurus you get your advice from, you could find yourself investing a couple of hours or more every day promoting your business on social media.
Most business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are recommending. If you are spending hours checking Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing articles for your blog or website, how can anything else in your business get done?
(Keeping a business up and running is how most small businesses spend their time. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their working hours 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.
A study of small businesses done in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent at least six hours per week on social media (the other half of businesses surveyed that used social media 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 figures would most likely be significantly 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.
(Small businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend more time promoting and marketing themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other equally important areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budgets, resources, and time and many different areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting 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 companies can make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without prior warning. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Automating systems and process to leverage time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth 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 channels should you focus more of your efforts, time, and your budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not control (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring 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 show 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 content for your website or blog and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more time, budget, and your efforts on,
- Invest most of your time and efforts building your own asset 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 that you stay away from all black hat techniques, tools, websites, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of sites like Facebook, Google, YouTube, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t require the use of black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this article is not to manipulate web 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 get additional exposure online from websites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen in the previous section how many small businesses lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited time, resources, and budget.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to individual marketing channels can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not opt for 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 one-time, and automate the distribution of your content to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social sites and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) 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 site as described in Part Two. Then, expertly configure things as shown in Part 3. After all this is in place, you then automate various processes 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 look now at a number of plugins that can be used to:
- Distribute content to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content via RSS to other web properties
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn 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 loads of great functions.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part Three …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
You can share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your content to various social media accounts.)
After all account and plugin settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account options displays in your post publishing section.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they are automatically distributed online.)
This is a hands-free way to get more exposure online for your content on social media websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting system that lets your visitors engage with your website or blog, post new comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions as part of an online community.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature using a third-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread your content around.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they plus1, like, or tweet your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they are typing their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv Premium version can attract more comments and web traffic and improve user engagement on your site.)
Go here to learn more about using this great plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a plugin that lets you automatically drip-feed content, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed your content automatically to over 30 online platforms)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to dozens of traffic-generating sites, including:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Linkagogo, Kippt, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Rebel Mouse, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, visit this website: 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 distribution campaigns), we have created a comprehensive article where we explore many social media tracking tools and technologies that are worth checking out and knowing about. To learn more, visit this page:
The above are just a few 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 System: Automated Content Syndication Process – Summary
Once you have your website or blog and plugins fully set up and configured, all you have to do to begin attracting new traffic is publish content regularly.
If you need endless topics for content that you can post on your web site, then subscribe to our FREE email training course on content marketing here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as you can. This step is explained in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read the rest of this article series, click here:
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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