Welcome to Part Four of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part 1 of this series, we described the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is publish fresh content consistently to automatically start attracting traffic!)
In Part 2, we look at the setup phase. We explain the best way to start 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 website is built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part Three, we discuss the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, we will discuss ways to automate your traffic using various plugins.
Why Automating Your Traffic Generation Makes Sense
Depending on who you listen to, you could find yourself trying to spend an hour or two (or more) every day promoting your business on social media while also trying to run your business, creating content and managing your online presence.
Most businesses simply lack the time, human resources and budget to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts recommend. If you spent hours posting updates on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter in addition to researching and writing content for your website or blog, how would you get anything else in your business done?
(Keeping a business running is how most small businesses spend their time. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many business owners 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 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 (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 survey was done today, the figures would most likely be significantly 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 consumed the most time online.
(Small businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: 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 focus their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and marketing budget and many different areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on various social sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. These sites often will make decisions that can significantly impact your business without consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building content on someone else’s real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can control your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other sites.
Automating business processes to save time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increased availability of hundreds of new channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited resources, budgets, and time. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels should you invest more of your time, efforts, and budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you ultimately have no control over (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic Generation With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that lets you automate the 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 efforts, budget, and your time on,
- Invest most of your time 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 strongly urge you to avoid using black hat solutions, techniques, websites, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the terms of service and policies of companies like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not need to involve the use of black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this series of articles is to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites used by your target audience.
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 most experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limited time, budget, and resources.
So, instead of posting content to each different channel, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels one at a time is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not use this time-saving strategy 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 marketing channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media channels and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content to other blogs and web 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as shown in Part 2. Then, get it configured as explained in Part 3. After all this is in place, you then automate various processes with plugins such as the ones listed in the section below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a few plugins that can:
- Syndicate content to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically via RSS to other online properties
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus and more as soon as you publish new content using a 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 (which you would have set up in Part 3.) …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Share your content automatically on several social accounts.)
After configuring all plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details show in the post publishing box.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it is automatically syndicated online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides you with an automated and hands-free way to create more exposure online for your content on social networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress commenting system allows your visitors to interact with your website, post new comments, reply to other users and engage with your content.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature using a 3rd-party plugin that integrates your comments with social media, helping to spread and share your content online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can create more user engagement on your site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like adding twitter names to comments, social enticements for content sharing, backlinks, and ability to use keywords in the username. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they are entering their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which can be included with their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv Pro version can help attract more comments and web traffic and create more user engagement on your web site.)
To learn more about the benefits of this plugin, visit this site:
SocialLinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that allows you to syndicate and drip-feed your content, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – drip-feed content automatically to dozens of traffic-generating sites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to over 30 traffic-generating platforms, such as:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Folkd, Plurk, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Rebel Mouse, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
Go here to learn more about this plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get actionable information about your content distribution campaigns), we have written a comprehensive article about social media monitoring tools that are worth knowing about. To learn more, go here:
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 Blueprint: Content Sharing Process – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do then to automatically start driving traffic is post web content consistently.
If you need help coming up with unlimited ideas for posting content on your web site, then subscribe to our FREE email training series on content marketing here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is addressed in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
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