Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to automate traffic to your website using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part One of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is post web content consistently to begin bringing traffic!)
In Part Two, we look at critical setup decisions. We help you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing site is built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we focus on configuring WordPress.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three we show you how to configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this article, you will learn how to set up various WordPress plugins that can help drive visitors automatically to your site.
Why Automating The Traffic Generation Makes Sense
Depending on which marketing gurus you listen to, you could find yourself trying to spend an hour or two (or more) every day posting content on social media.
Many small businesses simply lack the time, human resources and budget to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts recommend doing. If you were to spend half a day posting updates on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter in addition to researching and writing content for your blog or website, how would you get anything in your business done?
(Small businesses spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: NFIB)
Small business owners spend most of their working hours trying to keep their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
Research done by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent around six hours per week on social media (the rest 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 research was conducted today, the figures would most likely be significantly 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 was the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Small businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time marketing and promoting themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to prioritize their time on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budgets, resources, and time and many different areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These companies can and will make decisions that impact your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much time and effort building content on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can control your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other sites.
Automating processes to save time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increasing availability of so many new channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited resources, time, and marketing budgets. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels should you focus more efforts, time, and your budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on 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 I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that allows you to automate the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should focus more time, budget, and efforts on,
- Invest most of your time 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 recommend staying away from all black hat software, methods, sites, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the policies and terms of service of sites like YouTube, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not have to involve using black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this article 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 websites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that most business owners lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels individually can be extremely 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 once, and automate your content distribution to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social 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 site as shown in Part 2. Then, expertly configure things as described in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then automate these processes with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic System – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a few plugins that can help to:
- Distribute content to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content to other web properties via RSS
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn 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 useful features.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part Three …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts on several 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 account settings show in your 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 content is published, it will be automatically distributed online.)
Visit this website to learn more about using this powerful plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress commenting function allows your visitors to interact with your website or blog, post comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature with 3rd-party commenting plugins that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
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 like, tweet, or plus1 your post. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they enter their comment and retrieve their last 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 web site.)
Go here to learn more about using this plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a plugin that lets you drip-feed your content to dozens of traffic-generating platforms, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – drip-feed your content automatically to dozens of traffic-generating sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to over 30 authority platforms, including:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Instapaper, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
Go here to learn more about this plugin: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get useful information about your content marketing efforts), we have written a detailed article on social media measurement tools and technologies that are worth checking out and knowing about. Go here to learn more about this:
The above are just a few 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 Syndication Stage – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then is publish new content regularly to begin attracting more traffic.
If you need endless topics for posting content on your web site, then subscribe to our FREE email training series on growing your business online with content marketing here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is explained in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read more, click here:
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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