Welcome to Part Four of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to turn a website into an automated web traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part One of this article series, we provided an overview of the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is publish web content consistently to automatically generate web traffic!)
In Part 2, we discussed 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 site, and what to do if your existing website was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 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 that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you will configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part 4, we look at ways to automate the traffic-generation process with plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which experts you get your advice from, you could find yourself trying to spend a couple of hours every day (or more) posting content on social media while also trying to run your business, creating content and managing your online presence.
Many businesses simply lack the time, 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 online marketing experts are prescribing. If you were to spend half a day posting updates on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing articles for your blog or website, how would anything in your business get done?
(Keeping their business up and running is how most small business owners spend their working hours. Infographic source: NFIB)
Many businesses spend most of their time trying to keep 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 done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent around six hours per week on social media (the other half of businesses surveyed using social media spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This usage of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was done today, the figures would probably 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 consumed the most time online.
(Businesses are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time promoting and marketing themselves online in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to prioritize their time on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and marketing budget and many areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on various social media sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or StumbleUpon. These sites can make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other online accounts.
Investing in automation to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increased availability of hundreds of new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited marketing budgets, time, and resources. For example:
- Which channels do you invest more of your budget, time, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not control (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring your own domain?
- 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 show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that allows you to automate the traffic-getting 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 online marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should invest more of your time, budget, and your efforts on,
- Invest most of your 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 strongly urge that you stay away from all black hat strategies, websites, tools, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of services like Pinterest, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not require using black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this article is to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and marketing efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that most business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to different services one by one can be very time-consuming!)
Why not do 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 content once, and automate your content distribution to all other channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media channels and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) 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 get all this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as described in Part Two. Then, configure your site settings as described in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then connect all of the dots using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a number of plugins that can help:
- Post content to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically via RSS to other sites
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, 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 loads of great features.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part 3 …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
You can share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Distribute your content to various social accounts.)
After configuring all of the plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize options show in the post publishing area.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically get shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new content will be automatically syndicated online.)
Jetpack provides a hands-free way to create more exposure for your content online on social networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting function allows your blog readers to engage with your website, post comments, reply to other users and engage with your content as part of an online community.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature using a number of 3rd-party plugins that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share your content around.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they tweet, like, or plus1 your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they enter their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included with their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your website or blog.)
Visit the plugin website to learn more about this plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that lets you automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to over 30 online sites, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – drip-feed your content automatically to dozens of traffic-generating sites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to over 30 traffic-generating websites, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Delicious, Linkagogo, Kippt, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
Visit the plugin site for more details about the benefits of this powerful plugin: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get useful information about your content distribution efforts), we have created a comprehensive article where we explore several social media monitoring tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns. Go here to learn more:
The above are just a few 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 Automation Blueprint: Automated Content Distribution Phase – Summary
Once you have your site and plugins configured and set up, all you then have to do is post web content regularly to attract new web traffic organically.
If you need endless ideas for content that you can post on your website or blog, we recommend subscribing to our FREE email training course on growing your business with content marketing here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is explained in the next section of the WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read more, click here:
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"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)
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