Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to turn a site into an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part One, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is post new content on a consistent basis to drive more traffic!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we discuss configuring the system.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 we explain how to configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part 4, we will show you how to set up various WordPress plugins that can help drive traffic automatically to your site.
Why You Should Consider Automating The Traffic Generation Process
Depending on who you get your advice from, you could end up trying to spend 1-2 hours per day (or more) posting content on social media.
Many small businesses simply lack the time, 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 prescribing. If you spent all of your time checking Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook in addition to writing articles for your website or blog, how could you get anything else in your business done?
(Keeping a business running is how most small business owners spend their working hours. Infographic: NFIB)
Many business owners spend most of their working hours simply 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.
Marketing research conducted in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent 6 or more hours each week on social media (the other half of businesses surveyed using social media spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was done today, the figures would most likely 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 each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend more time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to focus their time on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budgets, resources, and time and many areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on various social media sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. These sites often will make decisions that affect your business without prior warning. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can have complete control of your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other online properties.
Automating processes to save time is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increased availability of hundreds of new channels for promoting and marketing a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited marketing budgets, time, and resources. For example:
- Which of these channels do you focus more of your time, budget, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you ultimately have little to no control over (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula for automating your 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 invest more 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 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 techniques, solutions, sites, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t have to involve using black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this series of articles is to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and marketing efforts, and get additional exposure online from websites 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 business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts advise. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited resources, time, and budget.
So, instead of using this time-consuming approach …
(Posting content to marketing channels individually 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 content one-time, and automate the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content 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 website or blog as shown in Part Two. Then, configure things as explained in Part Three. After all this is in place, you can then automate the process with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at some examples of WordPress plugins that can be used to:
- Syndicate content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically to other sites via RSS
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, 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 loads of useful functions.
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 – Publicize)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Publicize your posts automatically to several social media networks.)
After all of the account and plugin settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings show in your post publishing section.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically get shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new content will be automatically shared online.)
For more details about using this WordPress plugin, go here: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress built-in commenting function lets your visitors interact with your website, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions as part of an online community.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature using 3rd-party commenting plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments with social media, helping to spread and share your content online.
For example, a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like using keywords in the username, adding twitter names to comments, social enticements for content-sharing, and backlinks. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they are typing their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can choose to include below their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv Premium version can help attract more comments and visitors and improve user engagement on your web site.)
To learn more about using this handy plugin, visit the plugin website:
Social Link Machine
(Social Link Machine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social LinkMachine is a plugin that allows you to drip-feed content to dozens of authority platforms, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – drip-feed content to over 30 social sites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to over 30 social platforms, like:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Diigo, Plurk, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Overblog, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
Go here to learn more about this great plugin: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get actionable information about your content distribution efforts), we have created a detailed article where we explore over 30 social media monitoring 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 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 Automation Blueprint: Automated Content Distribution Phase – Summary
Once you have your site and plugins expertly configured and fully set up, all you then need to do to automatically attract more traffic is publish great content on a regular basis.
We have created an entire email email-based training course designed to help you come up with limitless content for posting to your web 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 our series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read the rest of this article series, click on the link below:
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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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