Welcome to Part Four of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part 1 of this article series, we describe the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is post great content regularly to automatically start generating new web traffic!)
In Part 2, we focus on the setup phase. We help you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your website was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part Three, we focused on the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you will configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this article, we look at ways to automate the traffic system with plugins.
Why Automate The Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on which business marketing experts you talk to, you could find yourself spending a couple of hours or more each day posting content on social media in addition to trying to manage your business, your content and your online presence.
Most small businesses lack the time, human resources and financial means to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are advising. If you are spending hours posting updates on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter in addition to researching and writing content for your website or blog, how can anything else in your business get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. Image source: NFIB)
Small business owners spend most of their working hours keeping 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.
A study of small businesses done in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent at least six hours per 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 use of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was conducted today, the figures would probably be 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 marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend more time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to focus their time on other equally important areas …
(Businesses with limited budgets, time, and resources and many different areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time 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 Pinterest. These sites can make decisions that affect your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much effort and time building content on someone else’s real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can have complete control of your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other sites.
Investing in business automation to save time is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited resources, budget, and time. For example:
- Which channels do you focus more efforts, budget, and your time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that belong to other people (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring the benefits of building content on your own domain?
- 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 we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that lets you automate your traffic generation 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 channels,
- Determine which channels you should focus more of your time, efforts, and your budget on,
- Invest most of your time and efforts building your own asset 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 strongly recommend avoiding black hat methods, sites, software, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of sites like Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t require using black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing here is not to game 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 marketing efforts, and get additional exposure online from websites frequented by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that most businesses lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts advise. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, time, and resources.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to services one by one is extremely 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 once, 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 web 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 get all this done?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress website as shown in Part Two. Then, expertly configure things as explained in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then automate various processes with 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 System – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a few traffic-generation WordPress plugins that can help:
- Post content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content to other websites via RSS
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ 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 great functions.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
You can share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Share your posts on various social accounts.)
After configuring all of the plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account details show in your post publishing section.)
Now, whenever 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 shared online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides you with a hands-free, automated way to get more exposure for your content online on social media sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting feature lets your blog readers interact with your site, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions as part of a social community.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature with a number of third-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them online.
For example, a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they tweet, like, or plus1 your post. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they are typing their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included with their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv can attract more comments and web traffic and create more user engagement on your website or blog.)
Go here to learn more about this plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a plugin for WordPress that lets you syndicate your content, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and create second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed content automatically to dozens of online sites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to over 30 authority platforms, like:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Diigo, Kippt, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
Visit this website to learn more about this powerful plugin: SocialLinkMachine
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 detailed article on social media monitoring tools and technologies that are worth checking out and knowing about. Learn more here:
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 System: Content Syndication Stage – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins expertly configured and set up, all you then have to do is publish web content consistently to automatically start generating new traffic.
If you need help coming up with great ideas for posting content on your website, we recommend subscribing to our FREE email training course on growing your business online with content marketing here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as can be improved. This step is addressed in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Part 4
To read more, click on the link below:
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