Welcome to Part Four of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to turn your website into an automated web traffic machine using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part 1 of this series, we provide an overview of the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to automatically drive more traffic is post great content on a regular basis!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we look at the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three we explain how to configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part 4, we will show you how to set up various WordPress plugins that can bring web traffic automatically to your website simply by posting web content.
Why Automate Your Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on which business marketing guru you get your advice from, you could end up investing 1-2 hours per day (or more) posting content on social media.
Most businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are advising. If you were to spend half a day checking Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing content for your blog or website, how could you get anything else in your business done?
(Small businesses spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: NFIB)
Small business owners spend most of their working hours trying to keep their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
Research 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 (most of the other 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 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 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: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to prioritize their time on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and budgets and many different areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or StumbleUpon. These sites can make decisions that can significantly impact your business without prior warning. Why invest so much effort and time building content on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can control your own real estate and post your content automatically to other sites.
Automating business systems and processes to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes 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 and business managers, especially for those with limited resources, time, and marketing budget. For example:
- Which marketing channels should you focus more of your efforts, time, and your budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not own (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that allows you to automate the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more of your 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 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 solutions, strategies, sites, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of companies like LinkedIn, Facebook, Google.
(Web traffic automation does not have to involve using black hat methods!)
The purpose of this article is not to manipulate online services or break their terms of service, but to show you how to be smart with your limited resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites 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 small businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different channels can be very time-consuming!)
Why not choose a smarter, time-saving strategy like 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 once, and automate the distribution of your content to all other services.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social channels and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) 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 shown in Part 2. Then, get everything configured as described in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you can then connect all of the dots with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some examples of traffic-generation WordPress plugins that can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content to other sites via RSS
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, 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 installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part Three …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Distribute your posts automatically to various social sites.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings show in the post publishing area.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they will be automatically shared online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides you with a hands-free way to get more exposure for your content online on social media sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress built-in commenting system allows your blog readers to engage with your website, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature using a third-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they +1, like, or tweet your post. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they enter their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which can be included below their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website.)
Visit the plugin website to learn more about the benefits of this plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a plugin that allows you to syndicate and drip-feed content to many online websites, build backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – drip-feed your content automatically to over 30 online platforms)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to many social websites, such as:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Kippt, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
Visit this website to learn more about this powerful 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 marketing campaigns), we have written a detailed article where we explore over 30 social media measurement tools and technologies that are worth knowing about. More info:
The above are just some examples of the many content distribution plugins that WordPress makes available.
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: Automated Content Syndication Process – Summary
Once your site and plugins have been configured and set up, all you have to do then is add fresh content consistently to bring web traffic organically.
If you need endless topics for content that you can post on your web site, we recommend subscribing to our email training series on content marketing 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 article in our series.
This is the end of Part 4
To read more, click on the link below:
***
"I love the way your email series "Infinite Web Content Creation Training Series" is documented and presented. It is very absorbing and captivating. The links and tutorials are interesting and educational. This has motivated me to rewrite my content following the concepts I am learning from the email series." - Mani Raju, www.fortuneinewaste.com
***