Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to automate traffic to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part 1, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to drive web traffic is post content regularly!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In Part Three, we focus on the configuration phase of the traffic automation process.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three we show you how to configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this step, we will show you how to set up various plugins that can drive visitors automatically to your website.
Why Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which online marketing gurus you talk to, you could find yourself trying to spend a couple of hours each day (or more) posting content on social media.
Most small business owners simply lack the time, human resources and budget to employ the services of a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts recommend. If you are spending hours posting updates on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing articles for your blog or website, how will you get anything else in your business done?
(Keeping a business up and running is how most small business owners spend their time. Infographic: NFIB)
Small businesses spend most of their working hours trying to keep 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.
A study of small businesses conducted by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent at least six hours per week on social media (the other half 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 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.
(Small businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: 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 areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budget, time, and resources and many different areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on a number of social media websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or StumbleUpon. These companies can make decisions that can significantly affect your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building content on someone else’s real estate? With WordPress, you can control your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other sites.
Automating processes to leverage time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increased availability of so many new channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited marketing budgets, resources, and time. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you invest more of your time, efforts, and your budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that allows you to automate your traffic-getting 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 online 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 urge you to avoid using black hat solutions, strategies, sites, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t require using black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this article series is not to manipulate web services or break their terms of service, but to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and efforts, and increase your exposure online to sites 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 how many small businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of posting content to each different marketing channel, which can be extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to individual marketing channels can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not opt for this time-saving strategy 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 channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media services 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your site as shown in Part 2. Then, get it all configured as shown in Part 3. After all this is in place, you then automate various processes with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at a few plugins that can help:
- Syndicate content to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content via RSS feeds to other websites
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, 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 loads of useful features.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts automatically on various social accounts.)
After configuring all of the account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize options in your publishing area.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it will be automatically shared online.)
To learn more about this great plugin, go here: Jetpack Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress native commenting function allows your site users to interact with your website or blog, post new comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature with a number of third-party plugins that integrate your comments with social media, helping to spread and share them online.
For example, a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they plus1, like, or tweet your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they type their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included below their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and visitors and create more user engagement on your web site.)
Go here for more information about this plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin that lets you automatically syndicate your content, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed content automatically to many traffic-generating websites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to dozens of traffic-generating sites, including:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Linkagogo, Plurk, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about this plugin, visit the plugin website: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get actionable information about your content marketing efforts), we have written a comprehensive article where we explore a number of social media measurement tools and technologies that are worth checking out and knowing about. For more information, go here:
The above are just some examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating and syndicating 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 Automation System: Content Syndication Process – Summary
Once your site and plugins have been set up and expertly configured, all you have to do to automatically generate traffic is post content on a regular basis.
We have created an entire email course aimed at helping you never run out of great content ideas for posting to your web site:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is explained in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Part 4
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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