Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to create an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part One of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is publish new content on a consistent basis to automatically drive more traffic!)
In Part 2, we focus on 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 existing site is built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we discuss the configuration phase of the blueprint.
Here, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 we show you how to configure all the settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this step, you will learn how to set up various WordPress plugins that can drive new visitors automatically to your website.
Why Automate Your Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on which business marketing gurus you get your advice from, you could end up spending an hour or two every day (or more) promoting your business on social media, as well as managing your business, your content and your online presence.
Most businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are recommending. If you are spending most of your time posting updates on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter in addition to planning and writing articles for your website or blog, how will you get anything in your business done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: 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 also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
Research conducted by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent at least 6 hours per week on social media (the other half 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 probably be even 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.
(Small businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: 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 vital areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budgets, time, and resources and many business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on a number of social sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. These sites can make decisions that affect your business without consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building content on someone else’s asset? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Automating systems and process to save time 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 exponential growth marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited budgets, time, and resources. For example:
- Which channels should you focus more time, budget, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not own (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring the benefits of building content on 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-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula for automating your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should focus more efforts, time, and budget on,
- Invest most of your time building your own asset 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 companies like Google, YouTube, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t have to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
The focus of this series of articles is not to game online services or break their terms of service, but 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 that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that many small businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited resources, budget, and time.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to different services one by one is very time-consuming!)
Why not use this method 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 marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social sites and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) automatically 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as described in Part 2. Then, get everything configured as described in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then connect all of the dots using plugins.
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 some plugins that can help:
- Syndicate content to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content to other sites via RSS
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, 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 useful features.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (which you would have 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)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Share your content on various social accounts.)
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 appear in the publishing area.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically get shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it will be automatically distributed online.)
This is a hands-free way to get more exposure online for your content on social websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress built-in commenting function lets your site users engage with your website or blog, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content as part of a community.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature with a 3rd-party plugin that integrates your comments with social media, helping to spread and share your content around.
For example, 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 reward features like ability to use keywords in the username, adding twitter names to comments, search-indexable backlinks, and social enticements for content sharing. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they are entering their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which can be included with their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your site.)
To learn more about the benefits of using this plugin, go here:
Social LinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that allows you to automatically syndicate your content, build backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate content to many social platforms)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to many authority platforms, including:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Folkd, Instapaper, Reddit, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Blogger, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
Go here to learn more about the benefits of this powerful plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get actionable information about your content distribution campaigns), we have written a comprehensive article where we explore many social media tracking tools and technologies that are worth knowing about. More info:
The above are just a few examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating and sharing 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 Blueprint: Content Syndication Phase – Summary
Once your site and plugins have been fully set up and configured, all you have to do to automatically drive traffic is add web content on a regular basis.
We have created a complete email email-based training course aimed at helping you come up with limitless content for your site:
Once you have 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 WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read more, click on the link below:
***
"Learning WordPress has been a huge stumbling block for me. I've been looking for something that covers absolutely everything but doesn't cost an arm and a leg. Thank you so much ... you have just provided me with what I have been looking for! Truly appreciated!" - Tanya
***