Welcome to Part Four of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to drive traffic automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to attract web traffic is post new content on a regular basis!)
In Part 2, we look at the setup phase of the automation blueprint. We help 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 website, and what to do if your site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we discuss the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure all the settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you will configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, we will look at ways to automate the traffic-generation process using plugins.
Why Automate Your Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on which business marketing gurus you get your advice from, you could find yourself spending 1-2 hours or more every day posting content on social media while also running your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Most business owners lack the time, resources and budget to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are advising. If you spent most of your time checking Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn in addition to writing articles for your website or blog, how could you get anything in your business done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small business owners spend their working hours. Infographic: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many business owners spend most of their working hours trying to keep their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted in 2012 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 of businesses surveyed that used 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 conducted today, the numbers would most likely be even 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 consumed the most time online.
(Small businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time marketing and promoting themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and marketing budgets and many different business areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another 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 have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These companies can and will make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much effort and time building content on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can control your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other sites.
Automating processes to leverage time is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth channels for promoting and marketing a business online creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited time, resources, and marketing budget. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you invest more of your budget, time, and efforts 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 your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Web Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula for automating your 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 web marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should invest more budget, time, and your efforts on,
- Invest most of your efforts building your own asset 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 recommend avoiding black hat methods, websites, software, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the policies and terms of service of services like Twitter, Facebook, Google.
(Web traffic automation does not have to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing here is not to game online services or break their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and increase your exposure online to websites frequented by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen in the previous section how most businesses 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 different marketing channels one at a time, which is extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to different channels is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose this one 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 marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social channels and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) 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 site as shown in Part 2. Then, get it configured as shown in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you can then connect all of the dots with 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 plugins that can be used to:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically via RSS to other websites
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, 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 useful features.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part Three …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your content automatically to several social networks.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings show in the publishing section.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new posts are automatically distributed online.)
To learn more about the benefits of using this great plugin, visit the plugin website: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting system lets your site users interact with your website or blog, post new comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions as part of a social community.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature with a 3rd-party commenting plugin that integrates your comments with social media, helping to spread and share your content online.
For example, using a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they +1, like, or tweet your post. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they type their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which can be included at the bottom of their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your web site.)
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, go here:
Social Link Machine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine 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 – syndicate and drip-feed content automatically to dozens of social sites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to over 30 social sites, like:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Plurk, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Rebel Mouse, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, visit this website: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get actionable information about your content distribution efforts), we have written a detailed article where we explore many social media monitoring tools and technologies that will help you identify new business opportunities, track competitor activity, see what online conversations are taking place that can affect your business,etc. 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 Automation System: Content Sharing Stage – Summary
Once your website and plugins have been configured and fully set up, all you have to do then to automatically attract more traffic is post fresh content on a regular basis.
If you need endless great ideas for posting content on your website, we recommend subscribing to our email training series here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is addressed in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
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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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