Welcome to Part Four of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part 1 of this article series, we described the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is publish fresh content consistently to start generating traffic!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase. We helped you understand 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 website, and what to do if your website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we focused on important configuration decisions.
In this step, we configure all the settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you will configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this article, we will discuss ways to automate the traffic system using plugins.
Why Automating The Traffic Generation Makes Sense
Depending on which marketing expert you listen to, you could end up investing an hour or two (or more) every day posting content on social media.
Many small businesses lack the time, resources and budget to run a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise. If you spent hours checking Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook in addition to writing content for your website or blog, how could you get anything else in your business done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small business owners spend their working hours. Source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many businesses 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 stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses done by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent around 6 hours per week on social media (the other half of businesses surveyed using social media 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 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 their most time-consuming online activity.
(Small businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend more time marketing and promoting themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other equally important areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budget, time, and resources and many business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on various social sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. These companies can and will make decisions that affect your business without prior warning. Why invest so much effort and time building content on someone else’s real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other websites.
Automating processes to save time is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the availability of hundreds of new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited time, budget, and resources. For example:
- Which channels do you invest more budget, efforts, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not control (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Web Traffic Generation With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method for automating the traffic-getting process 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 web marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more budget, efforts, and time 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 urge that you stay away from all black hat websites, solutions, strategies, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the policies and terms of service of companies like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not require the use of black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this article is not to game online services or flaunt their terms of service, but to show you how to be smart with your limited resources and automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and increase your exposure online to websites 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 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 time, budget, and resources.
So, instead of choosing this time-consuming approach …
(Posting content to individual channels is very 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 content one-time, and automate your content distribution to all other channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media services 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 get all this done?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as described in Part Two. Then, get it configured as explained in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you then automate the content distribution with plugins such as the ones shown in the following section.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic System – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a look now at some plugins that can help to:
- Post content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically to other sites via RSS
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn 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 many useful features.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part Three …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack – Publicize)
Configure this section to share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Distribute your content automatically to several social media accounts.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details in your post publishing box.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically get shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your post will be automatically shared online.)
Visit the plugin site to learn more about this great plugin: Jetpack by WordPress.com
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting function that allows your site users to interact with your web site, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature using 3rd-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content around.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website or blog. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like backlinks, social enticements for content sharing, the ability to add twitter handles to comments, and using keywords in the username. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they are entering their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can include below their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can help attract more comments and improve user engagement on your site.)
Go here for more details about using this powerful plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a plugin for WordPress that allows you to automatically drip-feed content, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate content to many social websites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to over 30 online platforms, like:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Diigo, Instapaper, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Sett, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about using this handy plugin, go here: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get actionable information about your content distribution campaigns), we have created a comprehensive article where we explore several social media monitoring tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns. More info:
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: Content Sharing Process – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been configured and fully set up, all you have to do to automatically attract traffic is post great content on a regular basis.
We have created a complete email email-based training course designed to help you never run out of content ideas for posting to your website:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is explained in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Part Four
To keep reading this article, click here:
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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