Welcome to Part Four of our Web 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 series:
In Part 1, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to automatically start generating new traffic is publish great content consistently!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we look at important configuration decisions.
Here, we configure all the settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 we explain how to configure all the settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, we will look at ways to automate the traffic system using a number of plugins.
Why Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on who you talk to, you could find yourself investing 1-2 hours per day (or more) posting content on social media.
Most small businesses 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 checking LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook in addition to researching and writing articles for your website or blog, how would anything in your business get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners 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 make sales in order to survive.
Research done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent 6 or more hours each week on social media (most of the other businesses surveyed using 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 survey was done today, the numbers 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 was their most time-consuming online activity.
(Businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend more time marketing and promoting themselves online in order to compete and survive, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and budget and many different areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time 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 LinkedIn. These companies can and will make decisions that impact your business without consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on someone else’s asset? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own real estate and post your content automatically to other websites.
Investing in automation to save time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increasing availability of hundreds of new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited budget, time, and resources. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels should you invest more of your time, budget, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that do not belong to you (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic Generation With WordPress
What I’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 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 marketing channels you should focus more of your efforts, budget, and time on,
- Invest most of your time and efforts building your own asset instead of someone else’s 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 strongly urge you to avoid using black hat tools, sites, strategies, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of sites like Google, YouTube, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t require using black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this article is not to manipulate online services or flaunt their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites used 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, many small businesses lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limited resources, budget, and time.
So, instead of using this approach …
(Posting content to different marketing channels one at a time can be 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 content once, and automate the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media channels and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) 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 get all this done?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress website or blog as described in Part Two. Then, get it all configured as described in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then connect all of the dots using plugins such as the ones shown below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a few WordPress plugins that can help:
- Distribute content to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- 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 Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus 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 useful features.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Share your content on several social 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 area.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it is automatically shared online.)
Go here to learn more about the benefits of using this handy plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress built-in commenting feature lets your blog readers interact with your website or blog, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature using 3rd-party plugins that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share them around.
For example, using a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website or blog. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like backlinks, social enticements for content sharing, the ability to add twitter names to comments, and using keywords in the user name. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they type their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included at the bottom of their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your web site.)
Go here to learn more about this plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that lets you automatically drip-feed content, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate content to many traffic-generating platforms)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to many authority websites, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Kippt, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Sett, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
Go here to learn more about this great plugin: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get useful information about your content marketing campaigns), we have created a detailed article listing many social media measurement tools that will help you keep track of online trends, monitor competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that affect your business, etc, see what conversations are taking place online that can affect your business,etc. More information:
The above are just some 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 you have your site and plugins set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then is post content consistently to begin attracting traffic organically.
We have created a complete email course designed to help you never run out of content for posting to your site:
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 Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read the rest of this article, click here:
***
"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie
***