Welcome to Part Four of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part One of this series, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is add new content regularly to automatically begin bringing web traffic!)
In Part Two, we focus on the setup phase of the blueprint. We explain the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we look at configuring the system.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 we explain how to configure all the settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this step, we will discuss ways to automate the traffic system with different plugins.
Why You Should Consider Automating The Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which business marketing gurus you listen to, you could find yourself trying to spend a couple of hours per day (or more) promoting your business on social media in addition to managing your business, your content and your web presence.
Many small businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts prescribe. If you spent hours posting updates on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn in addition to writing content for your blog or website, how could you get anything in your business done?
(Keeping a business up and running is how most small businesses spend their working hours. Image source: NFIB)
Small business owners spend most of their working hours simply keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
Marketing research conducted in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent six or more hours per week on social media (the rest 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 done today, the numbers would probably be even higher.
- More than half of all 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 spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to prioritize their time on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited budgets, time, and resources and many different business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time 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 companies can make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building content on someone else’s asset? With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can control your own real estate and post your content automatically to other websites.
Automating processes to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increased availability of so many new channels for promoting and marketing a business online creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited resources, time, and marketing budgets. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels should you focus more budget, efforts, and your time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not control (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting your own website?
- 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 we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that lets you automate your web traffic generation with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more time, budget, and your efforts on,
- Invest most of your time 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 you to avoid using black hat sites, software, methods, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of services like Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t have to involve the use of black hat methods!)
The focus of this series of articles is not to game web services or bypass their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to 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 that many businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts advise doing. 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 can be very time-consuming …
(Posting content to services one at a time 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 services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as shown in Part Two. Then, get everything configured as described in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then connect all of the dots with plugins like the ones listed below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at some WordPress plugins that can:
- Syndicate content to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content to other online properties via RSS
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, GooglePlus, 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 many useful functions.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part 3 …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Distribute your posts to several social media accounts.)
After all settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize options in the publishing section.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it will be automatically syndicated online.)
Go here for more details about the benefits of this plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting feature lets your visitors interact with your website or blog, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions as part of an online community.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature with a third-party plugin that integrates your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, using 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 reward features like SEO backlinks, using keywords in the user name, social enticements for sharing your content, and adding twitter handles to comments. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they are typing their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can choose to include with their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website.)
Go here to learn more about the benefits of using this great plugin:
Social Link Machine
(Social LinkMachine – Content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that allows you to automatically drip-feed content to many online platforms, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – drip-feed your content to many social sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to over 30 online platforms, like:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Plurk, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Sett, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about the benefits of using this WordPress plugin, go here: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get useful information about your content marketing campaigns), we have created a detailed article where we explore many social media tracking tools and technologies that will help you keep track of online trends, monitor competitor activity, see what online conversations are taking place that can affect your business, etc, see what conversations are taking place online that affect your business,etc. More info:
The above are just a few 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 Blueprint: Content Distribution Process – Summary
Once your website or blog and plugins have been set up and configured, all you have to do is post web content consistently to automatically begin attracting more web traffic.
If you need help coming up with ideas for content that you can post on your web site, we recommend subscribing to our email training series on growing your business with content marketing here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as you can. This step is covered in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part 4
To read more, click on the link below:
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