Welcome to Part Four of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to drive visitors automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part One, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to begin bringing more web traffic is add fresh content consistently!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase of the automation system. 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 website was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we focused on configuring the system.
In this step, we configure all the settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you will configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this section of the article series, we discuss ways to automate your traffic using WordPress plugins.
Why Automate The Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on which business marketing guru you listen to, you could find yourself spending a couple of hours or more every day posting content on social media in addition to trying to manage your business, your content and your online presence.
Most small businesses simply lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are prescribing. If you are spending all of your time posting updates on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook in addition to researching and writing articles for your blog or website, how does anything in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their time 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 remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
Research done by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent six or more hours each week on social media (the other half 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 survey was conducted today, the numbers would probably be significantly 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 was their most time-consuming online activity.
(Small businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse)
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 time, resources, and marketing budget and many different business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on various social media sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. These sites can and will make decisions that can significantly impact your business without prior notification. Why invest so much effort and time building content on someone else’s asset? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Automating processes to save 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 increased availability of many new channels for promoting and marketing a business creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited budget, time, and resources. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels should you invest 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 ignoring the benefits of building content on your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Web Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy for automating 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 channels,
- Determine which channels you should focus more efforts, time, and your budget on,
- Invest most of your time and efforts building your own asset instead of someone else’s and still benefit from other people’s marketing channels.
Many automated web 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 software, websites, strategies, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of services like Google, YouTube, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not need to involve using black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this article is 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 sites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen in the previous section that many businesses lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts recommend. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited resources, budget, and time.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to different services one at a time is very time-consuming!)
Why not choose this 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 content one-time, and automate the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media channels and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) automatically 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 WordPress website or blog as shown in Part 2. Then, configure it as explained in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then connect all of the dots with plugins like the ones listed in the section below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some traffic-generation plugins that can help to:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content to other websites via RSS
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, 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 many great functions.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part 3 …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
You can share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your content on various social media sites.)
After all of the settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings in your post publishing section.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically be shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it is automatically syndicated online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides a hands-free way to create more exposure for your content online on social websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress built-in commenting function lets your site users engage with your website, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions as part of a social community.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature using a number of third-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them online.
For example, a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your website. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like SEO backlinks, adding twitter usernames to comments, ability to use keywords in the username, and social enticements for sharing content. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they enter their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included below their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website or blog.)
To learn more about the benefits of using this plugin, go here:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a plugin that allows you to automatically syndicate content to over 30 online platforms, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate your content to dozens of social sites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to dozens of traffic-generating platforms, such as:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Folkd, Instapaper, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blogger, Rebel Mouse, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
Visit the plugin site to learn more about this plugin: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get useful information about your content marketing campaigns), go here to learn about social media measurement tools and technologies that you may want to check out:
The above are just a few 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 System: Content Sharing Process – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site and plugins set up and configured, all you need to do then to automatically begin bringing more web traffic is publish great content on a regular basis.
If you need endless content ideas for your website, then subscribe to our email training series on growing your business with content marketing here:
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 section of our WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read the rest of this article, click here:
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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