Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic generation machine using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this 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 blog, all you have to do is publish great content regularly to begin attracting web traffic!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase of the traffic automation process. 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 existing site was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we looked at the configuration phase of this blueprint.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure all the settings that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this section of the series, you will learn how to set up various plugins that can help bring visitors automatically to your website just by adding content.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate The Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which marketing experts you talk to, you could end up spending a couple of hours each day (or more) posting content on social media in addition to running your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Many small business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to employ the services of a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are advising. If you are spending most of your time posting updates on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter in addition to researching and writing articles for your website or blog, how does anything else in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: NFIB)
Many businesses spend most of their working hours just keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent 6 or more hours each week on social media (most of the other 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 survey was done today, the figures would most likely be higher.
- More than half of all businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more to create 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. Infographic: 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 time, budget, and resources and many different areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social media websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or StumbleUpon. These companies can and will make decisions that impact your business without prior notification. Why invest so much effort and time building content on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can control your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other online accounts.
Automating business systems and processes to save time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increased availability of hundreds of new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited resources, time, and marketing budgets. For example:
- Which channels should you focus more time, budget, and your efforts 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 domain?
- 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 I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that allows you to automate the web traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more efforts, time, and your budget on,
- Invest most of your time and efforts 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 tools, sites, strategies, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t need to involve using black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this article series is not to manipulate online services or bypass their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can 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
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 most experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited time, resources, and budget.
So, instead of posting content to each marketing channel, which is extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to different channels can be very time-consuming!)
Why not use this 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 once, and automate the distribution of your content to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social sites and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content to other blogs and web 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 of this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as described in Part Two. Then, get it configured as described in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then automate the content distribution using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic System – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at a few traffic-generating WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content to other online properties via RSS feeds
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, GooglePlus and more as soon as you publish new content using a WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many great features.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part 3 …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack – Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your content automatically to various social media networks.)
After all plugin and account settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account options in your Publish box.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically be shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new content will be automatically syndicated online.)
Go here to learn more about this handy plugin: Jetpack WordPress Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress commenting function allows your site users to interact with your website or blog, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress native 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 online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they like, tweet, or plus1 your post. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they are typing their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can include below their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your web site.)
Go here for more details about the benefits of this plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that lets you automatically drip-feed content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – drip-feed content to many online platforms)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to many authority platforms, such as:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Linkagogo, Plurk, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Overblog, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
Visit this website to learn more about this plugin: SocialLinkMachine
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 written a comprehensive article on social media monitoring tools and technologies that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives. For more details:
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: Automated Content Distribution Process – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been fully set up and configured, all you have to do is add new content regularly to automatically begin attracting more traffic organically.
We have created a complete email course designed to help you come up with limitless content for posting to your web site:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is covered in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read more, click on the link below:
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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