Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part 1 of this article series, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is post content regularly to generate web traffic!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we focus on the configuration phase of the automation blueprint.
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 3 you learn how to configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, we explain how to set up various WordPress plugins that can drive web traffic automatically to your site.
Why Automating Your Traffic Generation Makes Sense
Depending on who you get your advice from, you could find yourself investing an hour or two every day (or more) posting content on social media while also running your business, creating content and managing your online presence.
Many businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are recommending. If you spend hours checking Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn in addition to writing content for your blog or website, how can 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 keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and make sales in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent at least 6 hours per 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 most likely be even 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 spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to prioritize their time on other equally important areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, budgets, and time and many business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on various social media sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These sites can and will make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building content on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other websites.
Automating processes to leverage time is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited resources, time, and marketing budgets. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you invest more efforts, budget, 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 the benefits of building content on your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy for automating your traffic-getting process 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 invest more of your efforts, budget, and your time on,
- Invest most of your efforts 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 solutions, strategies, websites, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the policies and terms of service of services like Facebook, Pinterest, Google, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not require using black hat methods!)
The purpose of this article is to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution in order to 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
We’ve just seen that most small business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited resources, time, and budget.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to different marketing channels is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not opt for this approach 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 channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media services and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) automatically 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 website or blog as explained in Part Two. Then, configure your site settings as described in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you can then automate various processes with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some plugins that can be used to:
- Distribute content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically via RSS to other web properties
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ 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 useful functions.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to 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 a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Publicize your posts automatically to several social media sites.)
After all settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details in the post publishing box.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it will be automatically distributed online.)
Visit this website to learn more about the benefits of this handy plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting function that lets your blog readers engage with your web site, post new comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions as part of a social community.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature using third-party plugins that integrate with social media, helping to share and spread your content around.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can improve user engagement on your website or blog. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like SEO backlinks, using keywords in the user name, the ability to add twitter names to comments, and social enticements for sharing your content. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can include below their comment after clicking 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:
Social LinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social Link Machine is a plugin for WordPress that lets you syndicate content to many social websites, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate and drip-feed your content automatically to over 30 social sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to many online platforms, including:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Folkd, Plurk, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
For more details about the benefits of this WordPress plugin, go here: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get useful information about your content marketing campaigns), we have created a comprehensive article where we explore many social media tracking tools that will help you keep track of online trends, monitor competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that affect your business, etc, see what conversations are taking place online that could affect your business,etc. More information:
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 System: Automated Content Syndication Phase – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins configured and set up, all you have to do is add fresh content regularly to automatically attract web traffic organically.
We have created an entire email series designed to help you come up with unlimited content ideas for your website or blog:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is explained in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read the rest of this article, click here:
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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