Welcome to Part Four of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to automate traffic to your site using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part One of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to attract more traffic is publish great content consistently!)
In Part Two, we focus on critical setup decisions. We explain 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 site, and what to do if your site is built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part Three, we looked at the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure all the settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this article, we explain how to set up various plugins that can help drive traffic automatically to your website just by publishing fresh content.
Why You Should Automate The Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which experts you talk to, you could find yourself trying to spend an hour or two every day (or more) promoting your business on social media.
Many small businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are advising. If you were to spend most of your time posting updates on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook in addition to planning and writing content for your blog or website, how would anything in your business get done?
(Keeping a business running is how most small businesses spend their time. Infographic: NFIB)
Many businesses spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and make sales in order to survive.
Marketing research done by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent at least 6 hours per week on social media (the other half 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 conducted today, the numbers would most likely be even higher.
- More than half of all small businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more creating a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media was their most time-consuming online activity.
(Small businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend more time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other areas …
(Businesses with limited budget, time, and resources and many business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time 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 YouTube. These companies often will make decisions that affect your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building content on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can have complete control of your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other websites.
Automating systems and process to save time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increased availability of hundreds of new channels for marketing and promoting a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited time, resources, and budgets. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels do 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. YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring the benefits of building content on your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that allows you to automate the web traffic generation with WordPress.
With this formula, 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 of your efforts, time, and your budget on,
- Invest most of your time 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 urge you to avoid using black hat techniques, sites, tools, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of companies like Facebook, YouTube, Google, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not need to involve using black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this series of articles is not to game web services or bypass 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 frequented 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 small business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts advise. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited time, resources, and budget.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to individual channels is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not use a smarter, time-saving approach 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 your content distribution to all other services.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social channels 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as described in Part 2. Then, expertly configure everything as explained in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you can then connect all of the dots using plugins such as the ones discussed in the next section.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at some examples of traffic-generating plugins that can help to:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content to other websites via RSS feeds
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ 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 loads of great functions.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (set up in Part 3.) …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize feature)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your content automatically to various social media sites.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings displayed in the Publish area.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically be shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it will be automatically distributed online.)
This is a hands-free, automated way to get more exposure online for your content on social sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting function allows your site users to engage with your website, post new comments, reply to other users and engage with your content.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature with a number of third-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like the ability to add twitter usernames to comments, ability to use keywords in the username, social enticements for content-sharing, and SEO backlinks. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they type their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included with their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and web traffic and improve user engagement on your website.)
Go here for more information about the benefits of this great plugin:
Social Link Machine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a plugin that lets you automatically drip-feed content, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate content to many social sites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to many social platforms, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Folkd, Kippt, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Overblog, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
Visit this website to learn more about the benefits of this powerful plugin: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get useful information about your content marketing campaigns), we have written a detailed article on social media tracking tools that are worth checking out and knowing about here:
The above are just some examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating the distribution of your content online.
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 Syndication Stage – Summary
Once your site and plugins have been configured and fully set up, all you then have to do is add content on a regular basis to drive more web traffic organically.
We have created a complete email training series designed to help you come up with limitless content for your website or blog:
Once you have 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 article in our WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part 4
To keep reading this article, click here:
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