Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a website into an automated web traffic generation machine using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part 1, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is publish content regularly to automatically start generating web traffic!)
In Part 2, we discuss critical setup decisions. We help you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing website is built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we looked at the configuration phase of the blueprint.
In this step, we configure all the settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you will configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, we will show you how to set up various WordPress plugins that can bring web traffic automatically to your site.
Why You Should Consider Automating Your Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which business marketing experts you get your advice from, you could end up spending an hour or two per day (or more) promoting your business 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 advise. If you spent hours posting updates on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing content for your blog or website, how would anything in your business ever get done?
(Keeping their business up and running is how most small businesses spend their time. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many business owners spend most of their working hours simply keeping 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 make sales in order to survive.
A study of small businesses done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent six or more hours each 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 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 small 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.
(Businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend more time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, marketing budgets, and time and many 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, all of your efforts are going 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 affect your business without prior notification. Why invest so much time and effort building content on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other online accounts.
Automating 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 Digital Age, however, the increased availability of so many new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for 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 do not belong to you (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, 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 Your Web Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that lets you automate the traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this method, 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 online marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more efforts, budget, and time on,
- Invest most of your time building your own asset 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 urge that you stay away from all black hat techniques, software, sites, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of services like Google, Pinterest, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t need to involve using black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this article is not to manipulate web services or flaunt their terms of service, but to show you how to 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 in the previous section that most small businesses 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 resources, budget, and time.
So, instead of using this time-consuming approach …
(Posting content to marketing channels one at a time is very time-consuming!)
Why not use 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 once, and automate your content distribution to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media services and social 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 WordPress website or blog as explained in Part Two. Then, get it all configured as described in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you can then automate your content distribution using plugins such as the ones listed below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic System – Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at a number of plugins that can:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content to other online properties via RSS
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus 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 loads of great features.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Configure this section to share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Share your posts automatically on several social media accounts.)
After all of the settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details displays in your post publishing section.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically be shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it will be automatically syndicated online.)
Visit this site to learn more about the benefits of using this handy plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress built-in commenting feature allows your site users to engage with your web site, post comments, reply to other users and engage with your content as part of a community.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature with a 3rd-party commenting plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread them online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can improve user engagement on your website. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like social enticements for sharing content, adding twitter handles to comments, backlinks, ability to use keywords in the name. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they are typing their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which can be included below their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website.)
To learn more about using this plugin, go here:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that allows you to automatically syndicate content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed content to dozens of online sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to many social platforms, like:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Folkd, Plurk, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
To learn more about this great plugin, visit the plugin site: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get useful information about your content distribution efforts), we have created a comprehensive article listing a number of social media measurement tools that you may want to check out. Go here for more details:
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 Blueprint: Automated Content Sharing Phase – Summary
Once your website and plugins have been configured and fully set up, all you then need to do to generate traffic is publish content regularly.
If you need great content ideas for your web site, then subscribe to our email training course on content marketing here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is covered in the next article in the WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read the rest of this article series, click on the link below:
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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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