Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic generating machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part One of this series, we provide an overview of the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is post web content regularly to automatically begin attracting traffic!)
In Part 2, we focus on critical setup decisions. We explain the best way to get started 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 website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we look at configuring the system.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 we show you how to configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, we explain how to set up various plugins that can help drive new traffic automatically to your website when you begin posting content on a consistent basis.
Why Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on who you listen to, you could end up trying to spend an hour or two every day (or more) posting content on social media, as well as running your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Many small business owners simply lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts recommend. If you were to spend hours posting updates on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter in addition to writing articles for your blog or website, how would anything else in your business get done?
(Keeping a business up and running is how most small businesses spend their time. Infographic: NFIB)
Many businesses spend most of their time keeping 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.
Marketing research conducted by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent 6 or more 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 done today, the figures would most likely be significantly 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 consumed the most time online.
(Businesses are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to prioritize their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and marketing budgets 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 sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. These sites can and will make decisions that can significantly impact your business without consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building content on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other sites.
Investing in automation to save time is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the availability of hundreds of new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited budget, time, and resources. For example:
- Which marketing channels should you invest more of your time, efforts, and your budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you ultimately have little to no control over (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that allows you to automate the traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this formula, 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 costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more time, efforts, and your budget 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 recommend avoiding black hat software, strategies, sites, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the policies and terms of service of companies like Google, Facebook, Pinterest, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not require using black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this article series 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 used 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 many business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to services one by one is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose a smarter, time-saving approach like the one shown below 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 your content distribution to all other services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media services and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content 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 WordPress site as explained in Part Two. Then, expertly configure everything as shown in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you can then connect all of the dots with plugins such as the ones listed in the next section.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some examples of plugins that can:
- Post content to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically to other sites via RSS feeds
Jetpack by WordPress.com
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, GooglePlus, LinkedIn and more as soon as you publish new content using a plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with loads of great functions.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part 3 …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Publicize your posts automatically to several social media networks.)
After configuring all plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings displayed in the publishing section.)
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 posts are automatically syndicated online.)
Visit the plugin website to learn more about this powerful plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting system that allows your visitors to interact with your website or blog, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature with a 3rd-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates with social media, helping to spread and share them online.
For example, a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they like, plus1, or tweet your post. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they are typing their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included with their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv can attract more comments and create more user engagement on your site.)
To learn more about the benefits of this plugin, go here:
Social LinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that lets you syndicate and drip-feed content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – drip-feed your content to over 30 online websites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to dozens of traffic-generating platforms, like:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Plurk, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
To learn more about using this plugin, go here: 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 written a detailed article listing several social media measurement tools and technologies that are worth checking out and knowing about. To learn more, go here:
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 System: Content Distribution Process – Summary
Once your site and plugins have been fully set up and configured, all you then have to do is post content on a consistent basis to automatically attract traffic.
We have created an entire email course aimed at helping you come up with limitless content for posting to your website or blog:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is covered in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read more, click on the link below:
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