Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic machine using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part 1 of this article series, we provided an overview of the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is add web content on a consistent basis to generate traffic!)
In Part Two, we look at the setup phase. We explain the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site is built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we looked at configuring the system.
In this step, we configure all the settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, we will look at ways to automate the traffic-generation process using a number of WordPress plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which marketing guru you get your advice from, you could end up trying to spend a couple of hours or more per day promoting your business on social media.
Most businesses lack the time, resources and budget to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts recommend doing. If you were to spend half a day posting updates on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook in addition to planning and writing content for your blog or website, how would you get anything else in your business done?
(Small businesses spend most of their time just keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: NFIB)
Small business owners spend most of their working hours trying to keep their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
Research conducted in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent around six hours per 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 was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was conducted today, the figures would probably be even higher.
- More than half of all small 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. Source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend more time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus 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.)
One other important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. These sites often will make decisions that can significantly impact your business without consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other online accounts.
Automating business processes to leverage time is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increased availability of many new channels for promoting and marketing a business creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited budget, resources, and time. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels should you invest more of your efforts, time, and budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that do not belong to you (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting your own website?
- 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 I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that lets you automate your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should focus more efforts, budget, and your 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 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 techniques, websites, solutions, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the policies and terms of service of sites like Twitter, Facebook, Google.
(Web traffic automation does not have to involve using black hat methods!)
The focus of this series of articles is to show you how to be smart with your limited 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
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, many businesses lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of posting content to each channel, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels one by one can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not use a smarter, time-saving approach like this 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 sites and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) to other blogs and web 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 site as shown in Part Two. Then, get it all configured as shown in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then connect all of the dots using plugins such as the ones shown in the section below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic System – Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a few WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Post content to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically to other online properties via RSS feeds
Jetpack by WordPress.com
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, LinkedIn and more as soon as you publish your content using a WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many useful functions.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part 3 …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your posts automatically to several social media accounts.)
After configuring all plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings appear in the post publishing area.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new posts will be automatically distributed online.)
This is a hands-free, automated way to create more exposure online for your content on social networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting function that lets your visitors interact with your website, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature with a third-party commenting plugin that integrates your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them online.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your web site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like social enticements for sharing your content, SEO backlinks, adding twitter usernames to comments, and using keywords in the name. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they are entering their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can include below their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your site.)
Go here to learn more about this plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin that allows you to automatically drip-feed content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate content to over 30 traffic-generating sites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to dozens of social sites, including:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Folkd, Kippt, Reddit, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Rebel Mouse, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
Go here to learn more about this plugin: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get useful information about your content marketing campaigns), we have written a comprehensive article where we explore a number of social media tracking tools and technologies that are worth knowing about. For more information, 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 Blueprint: Automated Content Distribution Phase – Summary
Once you have your site and plugins fully set up and configured, all you need to do then to automatically start generating new web traffic is post great content consistently.
If you need endless great ideas for posting content on your website, we recommend subscribing to our email training series on content marketing here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is covered in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Part 4
To read more, click on the link below:
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"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
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