Welcome to Part Four of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new traffic automatically to your site using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part 1, we provided an overview of the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is publish great content on a regular basis to start driving traffic!)
In Part Two, we focus on the setup phase. We help you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things 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 WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we looked at configuring WordPress.
Here, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 we explain how to configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this section of the article series, you will learn how to set up various plugins that can drive new traffic automatically to your website.
Why You Should Consider Automating The Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which marketing gurus you get your advice from, you could end up spending a couple of hours or more each day posting content on social media.
Many small businesses lack the time, human resources and financial means to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts prescribe. If you spent half a day posting updates on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook 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 time keeping their businesses up and running. Source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their time 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.
A study of small businesses conducted by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all small 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 was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was conducted today, the figures would probably be even 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 was the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time marketing and promoting themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other equally important areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, 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 a number of social media websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. These companies often will make decisions that impact your business without prior warning. Why invest so much effort and time building content on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can control your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other websites.
Automating systems and process to leverage time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited time, marketing budget, and resources. For example:
- Which channels should you focus more of your time, budget, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not control (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on 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 Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that allows you to automate the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content 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 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 methods, websites, solutions, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of sites like YouTube, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t require using black hat methods!)
The purpose of this article is 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
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, most business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, time, and resources.
So, instead of using this approach …
(Posting content to services one at a time is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not use this time-saving approach 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 the distribution of your content to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content 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 of this done?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as described in Part Two. Then, get it configured as explained in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you can then automate these processes using plugins like the ones listed in the section below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a look now at some examples of traffic-generating WordPress plugins that can help:
- Syndicate content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically to other web properties via RSS
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn and more as soon as you publish new content using a WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with loads of great functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your content on various social accounts.)
After configuring all of the plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings displayed in your post publishing area.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your content is automatically distributed online.)
For more details about the benefits of this WordPress plugin, go here: Jetpack WordPress Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting function that lets your site users interact with your website, post new comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content as part of an online community.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature using 3rd-party plugins that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content online.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they plus1, like, or tweet your content. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they are entering their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can include at the bottom of their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your web site.)
Visit this website to learn more about this plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social LinkMachine is a plugin that allows you to automatically drip-feed content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed content to dozens of online websites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to many social platforms, including:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Linkagogo, Instapaper, Reddit, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
To learn more about the benefits of this plugin, go here: 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 campaigns), we have written a detailed article listing a number of social media measurement tools and technologies that are worth knowing about. Go here to learn more:
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 Phase – Summary
Once you have your website or blog and plugins fully set up and configured, all you then need to do to automatically start generating more web traffic is add content consistently.
If you need endless content ideas for your website, we recommend subscribing to our email training series here:
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 the series.
This is the end of Part Four
To keep reading, click on the link below:
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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