Welcome to Part Four of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic machine using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part 1, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is add content regularly to begin bringing web traffic!)
In Part Two, we look at critical setup decisions. We help you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part 3, we focus on important configuration decisions.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 you will configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part 4, we will show you how to set up various WordPress plugins that can drive new traffic automatically to your website.
Why Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on which marketing experts you listen to, you could find yourself trying to spend 1-2 hours every day (or more) promoting your business on social media, as well as trying to run your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Most businesses simply lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts prescribe. If you were to spend half a day posting updates on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing content for your blog or website, how could you get anything in your business done?
(Small businesses spend most of their working hours just keeping their businesses up and running. Source: NFIB)
Small businesses spend most of their working hours trying to keep their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and make sales in order to survive.
A study of small businesses done by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent at least 6 hours per 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 was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was conducted today, the figures would probably be significantly 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.
(Businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend more time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to focus their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and budgets and many different areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on various social websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. These sites 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 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 nothing new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increased availability of many new channels for marketing and promoting a business creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited marketing budgets, time, and resources. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels do you focus more of your budget, efforts, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not own (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring 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 Your Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that lets you automate your web traffic generation process 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 web marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should focus more efforts, budget, and your time on,
- Invest most of your time and 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 recommend avoiding black hat websites, tools, strategies, and anything designed to “game” or violate the policies and terms of service of services like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t have to involve using black hat methods!)
What we are focusing here is to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and increase your exposure online to sites 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, many small 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 be strategic with your limited budget, time, and resources.
So, instead of posting content to marketing channels one at a time, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to services one by one can be very 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 services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media channels and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content 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 get all this done?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as described in Part 2. Then, get it configured as shown in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then automate the process 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 few WordPress plugins that can be used to:
- Syndicate content to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content via RSS to other websites
Jetpack by WordPress.com
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 plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many useful functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part Three …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your posts to various social networks.)
After all settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details displayed in your post publishing box.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your posts are automatically distributed online.)
To learn more about the benefits of using this plugin, visit the plugin website: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting system that lets your visitors interact with your website, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature with a third-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can create more user engagement on your web site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like adding twitter usernames to comments, ability to use keywords in the username, search-indexable backlinks, and social enticements for content sharing. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they type their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can include with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and traffic and improve user engagement on your web site.)
To learn more about this great plugin, go here:
SocialLinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a plugin for WordPress that lets you automatically syndicate and drip-feed content, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed content to dozens of online platforms)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to many authority platforms, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Kippt, Reddit, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
For more details about this WordPress plugin, go here: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get useful information about your content marketing campaigns), we have created a detailed article listing several social media monitoring tools that will help you identify new business opportunities, track competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that could affect your business,etc. To learn more, visit this page:
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 System: Automated Content Syndication Stage – Summary
Once you have your website or blog and plugins fully set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do to start generating new web traffic is publish great content regularly.
We have created a complete email series designed to help you come up with unlimited content for posting to your site:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is addressed in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read more, click here:
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"Learning WordPress has been a huge stumbling block for me. I've been looking for something that covers absolutely everything but doesn't cost an arm and a leg. Thank you so much ... you have just provided me with what I have been looking for! Truly appreciated!" - Tanya
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