Welcome to Part Four of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to turn your site into an automated web traffic machine using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part 1 of this series, we provide an overview of the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to automatically generate more web traffic is add content on a regular basis!)
In Part 2, we look at the setup phase of the traffic automation process. 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 with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we discussed the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three we explain how to configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section of the article series, we will look at ways to automate traffic to your website with plugins.
Why Automating Your Traffic Generation Makes Sense
Depending on which experts you talk to, you could find yourself investing a couple of hours per day (or more) posting content on social media.
Most small businesses simply lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are prescribing. If you spent half a day checking Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing content for your website or blog, how could you get anything in your business done?
(Keeping a business up and running is how most small business owners spend their time. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent at least six 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 conducted today, the numbers would most likely be higher.
- More than half of all 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 each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend more time promoting and marketing themselves online in order to compete and survive, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and budgets and many business 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 marketing and promoting your business on a number of 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 YouTube. These sites can make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without consulting you. 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 distribute your content automatically to other websites.
Investing in automation to leverage time is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth channels for promoting and marketing a business creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited time, resources, and budget. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels do you focus more budget, efforts, and your time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring the benefits of building content on 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 With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method for automating the web traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more of your 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 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 that you stay away from all black hat methods, websites, software, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of sites like Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not have to involve using black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this series of articles is not to game online services or break their terms of service, but to show you how to be smart with your limited resources and automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites visited 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, most businesses lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited resources, budget, and time.
So, instead of using this time-consuming approach …
(Posting content to different channels is very time-consuming!)
Why not do 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 once, and automate your content distribution to all other services.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social channels and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress website or blog as explained in Part 2. Then, configure it as described in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then automate the content distribution with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a number of traffic-generation WordPress plugins that can help:
- Syndicate content to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically to other websites via RSS
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, 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 features.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part Three …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
You can share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Distribute your posts to 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 settings show in your publishing area.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically get shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they are automatically distributed online.)
To learn more about the benefits of using this WordPress plugin, visit this website: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting function that allows your blog readers to interact with your web site, post new comments, reply to other users and engage with your content as part of an online community.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature using a number of third-party plugins that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content online.
For example, a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they tweet, like, or +1 your post. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they are typing their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can include with their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website or blog.)
Visit this website to learn more about this handy plugin:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that allows you to automatically syndicate your content, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed your content to dozens of social platforms)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to many traffic-generating platforms, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Folkd, Plurk, Zotero, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Rebel Mouse, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
Go here to learn more about the benefits of this plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get actionable information about your content distribution campaigns), we have written a comprehensive article on social media tracking tools and technologies that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives. To learn more, go here:
The above are just a few examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating and syndicating 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 Blueprint: Automated Content Sharing Stage – Summary
Once you have your website or blog and plugins fully set up and configured, all you need to do to automatically begin bringing web traffic is add great content on a consistent basis.
If you need endless great ideas for content that you can post on your site, then subscribe to our email training series here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is addressed in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read more, click here:
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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