Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to create an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part One of this article series, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to automatically bring more traffic is publish new content consistently!)
In Part Two, we focus on critical setup decisions. 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 site, and what to do if your existing site was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In Part Three, we focused on the configuration phase.
Here, we configure all the settings that 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 affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part 4, we look at ways to automate the traffic system using various plugins.
Why Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which online marketing experts you talk to, you could find yourself trying to spend an hour or two per day (or more) promoting your business on social media while also managing your business, your content and your online presence.
Many small businesses simply lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts prescribe. If you spent all of your time posting updates on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook in addition to researching and writing content for your blog or website, how could you get anything in your business done?
(Small businesses spend most of their working hours simply keeping their businesses up and running. Image source: NFIB)
Small businesses spend most of their working hours simply 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 email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent at least 6 hours each week on social media (the other half 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 survey was conducted today, the numbers would most likely 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 consumed the most time online.
(Small businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend more time promoting and marketing themselves online in order to compete and survive, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and budgets and many different business areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
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 sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. 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 time and effort building content on someone else’s real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can control your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Investing in business automation to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth channels for promoting and marketing a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited budgets, time, and resources. For example:
- Which of these channels should you focus 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, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting your own domain?
- 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 we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula for automating the web traffic generation process 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 marketing channels you should invest more time, efforts, and your budget on,
- Invest most of your efforts building your own asset instead of someone else’s 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 methods, solutions, sites, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the policies and terms of service of sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t require using black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this article series is not to manipulate web services or flaunt their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and increase your exposure online to websites 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, many small business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to different channels can be very time-consuming!)
Why not choose a smarter, time-saving strategy like 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 channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social services and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) to other blogs and online 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as shown in Part Two. Then, get it all configured as shown in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you can then connect all of the dots with plugins such as the ones discussed in the next section.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic System – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some examples of traffic-generation plugins that can be used to:
- Syndicate content to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically via RSS to other blogs
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and more as soon as you publish your content using a WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many great features.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to 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 feature)
Configure this section to share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Share your content on various social sites.)
After all of the settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings displays in the post publishing box.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they will be automatically distributed online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides you with a hands-free way to create more exposure for your content online on social media sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting function lets your blog readers interact with your site, post new comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature with 3rd-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to share and spread them online.
For example, a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they tweet, plus1, or like your content. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can choose to include at the bottom of their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website or blog.)
To learn more about this plugin, go here:
SocialLinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that lets you automatically drip-feed your content to many online websites, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed content automatically to over 30 social sites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to over 30 authority websites, such as:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Instapaper, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Sett, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
To learn more about using this WordPress plugin, go here: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get actionable information about your content distribution efforts), we have created a comprehensive article listing over 30 social media tracking tools that you may want to check out. Go here for more info:
The above are just a few 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 Blueprint: Content Distribution Process – Summary
Once you have your site and plugins set up and configured, all you have to do to automatically start generating web traffic is add web content on a regular basis.
If you need endless content ideas for your site, then subscribe to our FREE email training course on content marketing here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as you can. This step is covered in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read the rest of this article, click here:
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
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