Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using the WordPress CMS.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part One, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to automatically start generating new traffic is add content on a regular basis!)
In Part Two, we discuss critical setup decisions. We explain the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website is built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we focus on configuring the system.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 we explain how to configure all the settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this article, we discuss ways to automate the traffic system using a number of plugins.
Why You Should Automate The Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which experts you talk to, you could find yourself investing 1-2 hours every day (or more) posting content on social media, as well as managing your business, your content and your online presence.
Most small businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise. If you were to spend half a day checking Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn in addition to writing content for your website or blog, how would anything else in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours simply keeping their businesses up and running. Source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their working hours just 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 done by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all 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 survey was done today, the figures would probably be even 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 are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing 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, budget, and resources and many different business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another important thing to consider 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 Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These sites can make decisions that can significantly affect your business without prior notification. Why invest so much time and effort building content on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other sites.
Automating systems and process to leverage time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited time, resources, and budget. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels do you focus more time, efforts, and budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Web Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that lets you automate the traffic generation with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should focus more efforts, time, and your budget on,
- Invest most of your time building your own asset instead of someone else’s 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 urge you to avoid using black hat software, sites, methods, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the terms of service and policies of services like Pinterest, Facebook, Google.
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t have to involve using black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing here is to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and increase your exposure online to websites used 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, most small business owners lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of using this time-consuming approach …
(Posting content to individual channels can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not do 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 content one-time, and automate the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social services and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content to other blogs and web 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 explained in Part 2. Then, expertly configure things as shown in Part 3. After all this is in place, you can then automate your content distribution with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a look now at some examples of traffic-generating WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Post content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content via RSS feeds to other blogs
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and more as soon as you publish new content using a WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many great functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (set up in Part Three.) …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack – Publicize)
You can share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Share your content automatically on various social sites.)
After all plugin and account settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize options displayed in your post publishing section.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new posts are automatically shared online.)
Visit this site to learn more about using this plugin: Jetpack WordPress Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress commenting function allows your site users to engage with your website, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions as part of a community.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature with a third-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates your comments with social media, helping to spread and share your content online.
For example, using a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they tweet, +1, or like your post. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they enter their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which can be included at the bottom of their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv can attract more comments and traffic and create more user engagement on your web site.)
Visit the plugin site for more details about using this plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that allows you to automatically drip-feed content to dozens of authority platforms, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate your content to many online websites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to many traffic-generating websites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Delicious, Diigo, Instapaper, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Sett, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
To learn more about this great plugin, go here: SocialLinkMachine
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 many social media tracking tools that will help you identify new business opportunities, track competitor activity, see what online conversations are taking place that affect your business,etc. For more details, go here:
The above are just some 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 System: Automated Content Syndication Phase – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been fully set up and configured, all you have to do to begin bringing more traffic is post web content on a regular basis.
If you need great content ideas for your website, we recommend subscribing to our email training series here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is covered in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Section Four
To continue reading about this topic, click on the link below:
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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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