Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to create an automated web traffic generating machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part One of this series, we describe the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to automatically attract web traffic is post web content regularly!)
In Part 2, 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 existing website is built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In Part Three, we focused on the configuration phase of the automation process.
In this step, we configure all the settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, we will show you how to set up various WordPress plugins that can help get web traffic automatically to your website or blog.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic Generation
Depending on which online marketing gurus you listen to, you could find yourself spending an hour or two every day (or more) posting content on social media while also trying to run your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Many businesses simply lack the time, human resources and financial means to employ the services of a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are advising. If you spent hours checking Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn in addition to planning and writing content for your website or blog, how could you get anything else in your business done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their working hours keeping 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.
Marketing research done 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 rest 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 done today, the figures would probably be 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 was the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend more time promoting and marketing themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and marketing budget and many areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on various social media websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. These sites can and will make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without prior warning. Why invest so much effort and time building content on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can control your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other sites.
Automating business processes to leverage time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increasing availability of hundreds of new channels for promoting and marketing a business online creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited resources, time, and budget. For example:
- Which of these channels should you invest more budget, time, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic Generation With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that lets you automate the 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 online marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more time, budget, and efforts 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 strongly urge you to avoid using black hat techniques, tools, websites, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of companies like Pinterest, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t have to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this article is to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and marketing efforts, and increase your exposure online to sites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, most small business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of posting content to individual channels, which can be extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to different channels can be very time-consuming!)
Why not choose this one 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 social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content automatically to other blogs and online 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 site as shown in Part 2. Then, get it all configured as shown in Part 3. After all this is in place, you can then automate your content distribution with plugins like the ones shown below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a number of traffic-generation plugins that can be used to:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically via RSS feeds to other websites
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, GooglePlus 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 many great features.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part Three …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack – Publicize feature)
Configure this section to share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Share your posts automatically on various social networks.)
After configuring all of the plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account options displayed in the post publishing box.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they are automatically shared online.)
This is an automated and hands-free way to create more exposure for your content online on social websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress built-in commenting system allows your blog readers to interact with your website, post comments, reply to other users and engage with your content.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature using a third-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread them online.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can create more user engagement on your web site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like social enticements for content sharing, using keywords in the user name, search-indexable backlinks, and adding twitter names to comments. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they are typing their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included with their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and improve user engagement on your web site.)
To learn more about this great plugin, visit the plugin website:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
SocialLinkMachine is a plugin for WordPress that allows you to syndicate and drip-feed content to dozens of authority platforms, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate your content to many traffic-generating websites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to many online websites, including:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Diigo, Kippt, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Overblog, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
Go here to learn more about this plugin: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get useful information about your content marketing efforts), we have created a detailed article where we explore many social media tracking tools and technologies that you may want to check out. More info:
The above are just some examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating 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 Sharing Phase – Summary
Once your website and plugins have been fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then to drive traffic is add content on a regular basis.
If you need topics for content that you can post on your website, then subscribe to our email training course 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 addressed in the next section of the WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section 4
To keep reading about this topic, click on the link below:
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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