Welcome to Part 4 of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to drive new visitors automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part One of this article series, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is post fresh content on a regular basis to start generating new web traffic!)
In Part 2, we discuss critical setup decisions. We explain the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing website is built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we looked at configuring the system.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure all the settings that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this section, we explain how to set up various WordPress plugins that can drive new visitors automatically to your website simply by posting content regularly.
Why Automate The Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on which business marketing gurus you get your advice from, you could find yourself investing a couple of hours per day (or more) promoting your business on social media.
Most business owners simply lack the time, human resources and financial means to employ the services of a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are advising. If you were to spend all of your time posting updates on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook in addition to planning and writing articles for your blog or website, how would anything in your business get done?
(Keeping a business up and running is how most small businesses spend their time. Image source: NFIB)
Small business owners spend most of their time trying to keep 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:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent 6 or more hours each week on social media (the rest 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 conducted 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 their most time-consuming online activity.
(Small businesses are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other areas …
(Businesses with limited budgets, time, and resources and many business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other important thing to consider 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 LinkedIn. These sites can and will make decisions that can significantly affect your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building content on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can control your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other sites.
Investing in automation to save time is not new. Businesses have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increasing availability of so many new channels for promoting and marketing a business online creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited marketing budget, resources, and time. For example:
- Which of these channels should you invest 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, Twitter, Pinterest, 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 Web Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy for automating the web traffic generation with WordPress.
With this strategy, 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 budget, time, and your efforts on,
- Invest most of your 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 recommend avoiding black hat sites, solutions, strategies, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of services like YouTube, Facebook, Google.
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t require the use of black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this series of articles is not to manipulate web services or bypass their terms of service, but 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 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, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts recommend. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of posting content to different marketing channels individually, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to marketing channels one by one is 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 the distribution of your content to all other services.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social services and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content 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 site as described in Part Two. Then, get everything configured as described 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 Web Traffic System – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some examples of WordPress plugins that can:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically via RSS feeds to other websites
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, GooglePlus, 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 great functions.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (as described in Part 3.) …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack – Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Share your content on several 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 options appear in the post publishing area.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically get shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they will be automatically shared online.)
Go here to learn more about the benefits of this powerful plugin: Jetpack WordPress Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting function lets your visitors interact with your web site, post new comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature with a 3rd-party plugin that integrates your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content online.
For example, using a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website or blog. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like search-indexable backlinks, social enticements for content-sharing, using keywords in the user name, and the ability to add twitter handles to comments. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they are typing their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can choose to include at the bottom of their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website.)
Go here to learn more about this plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – Content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that allows you to automatically syndicate content, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate content to over 30 social platforms)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to many traffic-generating platforms, including:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Kippt, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Overblog, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
Visit the plugin website to learn more about the benefits of using this handy plugin: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get actionable information about your content marketing campaigns), we have created a comprehensive article listing over 30 social media tracking tools that are worth knowing about. Go here to learn more:
The above are just a few examples of the many content distribution plugins that are available to WordPress users.
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 System: Automated Content Syndication Phase – Summary
Once you have your site and plugins fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do is post web content on a regular basis to begin bringing more traffic organically.
If you need endless content ideas for your website or blog, then subscribe to our email training series on growing your business with content marketing here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as can be improved. This step is covered in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read more, click on the link below:
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