Welcome to Part Four of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to drive new traffic automatically to your site using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part One, we describe the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is post fresh content consistently to start driving traffic!)
In Part 2, we discussed critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to start 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 a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In Part 3, we focus on the configuration phase of the automation blueprint.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section of the article series, you will learn how to set up various plugins that can bring new traffic automatically to your site.
Why Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which marketing gurus you talk to, you could end up spending a couple of hours or more each day promoting your business on social media, as well as trying to manage your business, your content and your online presence.
Most 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 advise doing. If you spend hours checking LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook in addition to researching and writing content for your blog or website, how does anything else in your business get done?
(Keeping a business up and running is how most small businesses spend their time. Infographic: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also 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 VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent six or more hours each week on social media (the rest spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This usage of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was done today, the figures would probably be 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 was their most time-consuming online activity.
(Businesses are spending more time marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse.com)
As 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 business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on a number of social media websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or StumbleUpon. These sites can make decisions that affect your business without prior warning. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on someone else’s asset? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other online properties.
Investing in business automation to leverage time is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the availability of many new channels for marketing and promoting a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited time, resources, and marketing budgets. For example:
- Which channels should you invest more time, efforts, and budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you ultimately have no control over (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that lets you automate the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should focus more time, efforts, and your budget on,
- Invest most of your time 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 recommend avoiding black hat websites, tools, methods, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of services like Twitter, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not require the use of black hat techniques!)
The focus of this article series is to show you how to be smart with your 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, most business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited time, resources, and budget.
So, instead of using this approach …
(Posting content to individual channels can be very time-consuming!)
Why not choose this strategy 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 your content distribution to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media services and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content 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 explained in Part 2. Then, get it all configured as explained in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you then connect all of the dots using plugins like the ones shown below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic System – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at a number of traffic-generating WordPress plugins that can be used to:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content via RSS feeds to other web properties
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, GooglePlus and more as soon as you publish your 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, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack – Publicize)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts on several social networks.)
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 options displayed in your post publishing section.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically get shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your posts are automatically shared online.)
Jetpack provides a hands-free, automated way to create more exposure for your content online on social websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting function that lets your site users interact with your website, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature with third-party plugins that integrate your comments with social media, helping to spread and share 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 +1, tweet, or like your content. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they are entering their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which they can choose to include with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your site.)
For more details about the benefits of using this great plugin, go here:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin that allows you to syndicate content, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate content automatically to over 30 online sites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to many social websites, including:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Linkagogo, Kippt, Zotero, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Overblog, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
To learn more about this powerful plugin, visit the plugin site: Social Link Machine
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 created a comprehensive article where we explore over 30 social media tracking tools that you may want to check out. For more details, go here:
The above are just some 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 Blueprint: Content Sharing Phase – Summary
Once you have your site and plugins expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do is publish fresh content consistently to attract more traffic organically.
We have created a complete email course designed to help you come up with limitless content ideas for your site:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is explained in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read more, click here:
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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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