Welcome to Part Four 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 article series, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is post web content regularly to automatically bring web traffic!)
In Part 2, we look at the setup phase. We help you understand the best way to start 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 website was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog 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 website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section of the article series, we discuss ways to automate traffic to your website using various WordPress plugins.
Why Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which marketing guru you listen to, you could end up trying to spend 1-2 hours per day (or more) promoting your business on social media while also trying to manage your business, your content and your web presence.
Many small business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts recommend. If you are spending all of your time checking Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in addition to planning and writing content for your website or blog, how can anything in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Source: NFIB)
Many business owners spend most of their working hours 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 conducted by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent around six hours each 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 done today, the numbers would probably be significantly 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 the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Businesses are spending more time marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to focus their time on other equally important areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and marketing budget and many different areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on a number of social websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. These companies can make decisions that can significantly impact your business without prior notification. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on someone else’s asset? With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can have complete control of your own real estate and post your content automatically to other websites.
Automating business systems and processes to save time is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increasing availability of so many 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 time, resources, and marketing budget. For example:
- Which 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. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring 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 Generation Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy for automating the traffic generation 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 channels you should focus more of your time, efforts, and budget on,
- Invest most of your time and efforts 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 strongly recommend staying away from all black hat methods, tools, websites, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of services like Google, Pinterest, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t require using black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this article series is to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and marketing 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, many small business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts recommend. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited time, budget, and resources.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to marketing channels one by one is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not opt for this time-saving 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 the distribution of your content to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social services 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 WordPress website as shown in Part Two. Then, get it configured as described in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you can then automate these processes with plugins like the ones listed below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at a few traffic-generation WordPress plugins that can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically via RSS to other websites
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 loads of great features.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part Three …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Share your posts automatically on various social media networks.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account details show in the post publishing section.)
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 syndicated online.)
This is a hands-free, automated way to create more exposure for your content online on social media networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting feature lets your blog readers interact with your web site, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature with third-party 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 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 like, tweet, or +1 your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they enter their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can choose to include below 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.)
To learn more about this powerful plugin, visit this website:
Social Link Machine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that lets you syndicate and drip-feed content to dozens of traffic-generating platforms, build backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and create second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate your content to dozens of authority websites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to many social platforms, like:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Plurk, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Blogger, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
For more details about the benefits of this 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 useful information about your content distribution efforts), we have written a comprehensive article where we explore a number of social media measurement tools that are worth knowing about. For more details, go here:
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 Blueprint: Content Syndication Process – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do is post new content consistently to automatically generate more web traffic.
If you need great ideas for posting content on your site, then subscribe to our email training series on content marketing here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is addressed in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
***
"Learning WordPress has been a huge stumbling block for me. I've been looking for something that covers absolutely everything but doesn't cost an arm and a leg. Thank you so much ... you have just provided me with what I have been looking for! Truly appreciated!" - Tanya
***