Welcome to Part Four of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your site into an automated web traffic generation machine using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part 1 of this series, we provided an overview of the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is post content regularly to automatically drive more web traffic!)
In Part 2, we look at the setup phase. We explain the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing site is built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we discussed the configuration phase.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you will configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part 4, we explain how to set up various WordPress plugins that can help bring traffic automatically to your site whenever you begin publishing fresh content.
Why Automate Your Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on which online marketing expert you talk to, you could find yourself spending an hour or more every day posting content on social media while also managing your business, your content and your online presence.
Most small business owners lack the time, resources and financial means to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts advise doing. If you spend most of your time posting updates on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn in addition to writing content for your website or blog, how does anything in your business get done?
(Keeping a business running is how most small business owners spend their working hours. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many business owners spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
Marketing research done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent six or more hours each week on social media (the other half of 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 research was done today, the numbers would most likely 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 consumed the most time online.
(Small businesses are spending more time marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend more time on online marketing 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 resources, time, and budgets and many 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 media sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These sites can and will make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on rented 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 nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited resources, time, and budget. For example:
- Which marketing channels should you invest more time, budget, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy for automating your traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should invest more efforts, budget, and your time 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 urge you to avoid using black hat websites, techniques, software, and anything designed to “game” or violate the policies and terms of service of sites like Facebook, Google, YouTube, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not require the use of black hat techniques!)
The focus of this series of articles is not to manipulate online services or break their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from 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 that many small business owners lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited resources, time, and budget.
So, instead of posting content to marketing channels one at a time, which can be extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to different services one by one can be very time-consuming!)
Why not choose this 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 one-time, and automate your content distribution to all other channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media sites 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress website as shown in Part 2. Then, expertly configure it as explained in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you then automate the process using plugins like the ones listed in the next section.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a few WordPress plugins that can:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically via RSS feeds to other sites
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, GooglePlus 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 many useful features.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part Three …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Share your posts automatically 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 details in your Publish area.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it is automatically syndicated online.)
To learn more about the benefits of this great plugin, go here: Jetpack Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting system that allows your visitors to interact with your website, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature with a third-party commenting plugin that integrates your comments with social media, helping to spread and share them around.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can 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 website or blog of the comment author while they enter their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which they can include with their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and improve user engagement on your web site.)
Visit this website to learn more about the benefits of this great plugin:
Social Link Machine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a WordPress plugin that allows you to syndicate your content to over 30 traffic-generating sites, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate content to dozens of authority platforms)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to dozens of traffic-generating websites, like:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Linkagogo, Kippt, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
Go here to learn more about this plugin: Social LinkMachine
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 on social media tracking tools that are worth checking out and knowing about. Go here to learn more:
The above are just a few examples of the many content distribution plugins that are available to WordPress users.
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: Automated Content Distribution Stage – Summary
Once your website and plugins have been configured and fully set up, all you need to do then is post fresh content regularly to automatically begin bringing new web traffic organically.
We have created an entire email email-based training course aimed at helping you come up with unlimited content ideas for posting to your website:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is explained in the next article in our WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read the rest of this article series, click on the link below:
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