Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to drive new traffic automatically to your site using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part 1, we describe the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is post new content on a regular basis to automatically bring traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase of the blueprint. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing website was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we look at important configuration decisions.
In this step, we configure all the settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this article, we will show you how to set up various plugins that can help drive new visitors automatically to your site.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which marketing guru you talk to, you could end up trying to spend a couple of hours each day (or more) posting content on social media while also trying to run your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Many business owners lack the time, human 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 are advising. If you were to spend half a day posting updates on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing articles for your blog or website, how would you get anything else in your business done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many businesses spend most of their time keeping 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 in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent six or more hours each week on social media (the rest spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This usage of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was conducted today, the numbers would most likely be higher.
- More than half of all 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 are spending more time marketing and promoting themselves online. Image 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 equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, marketing budget, and time and many areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on a number of social websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These sites often will make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building content on someone else’s asset? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can have complete control of your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other websites.
Automating processes to leverage time is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increasing availability of many new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited resources, budgets, and time. For example:
- Which marketing channels should you invest more of your efforts, budget, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting 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 Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that lets you automate your 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 online marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more of your time, budget, and efforts on,
- Invest most of your time and efforts 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 you to avoid using black hat methods, sites, solutions, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of sites like LinkedIn, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not require the use of black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this article is to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to 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 in the previous section that most businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, time, and resources.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to individual marketing channels is extremely 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 once, and automate your content distribution to all other channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social channels and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content automatically to other blogs and online 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as explained in Part Two. Then, expertly configure it as explained in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you then connect all of the dots using plugins like the ones discussed 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 – Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at some examples of plugins that can be used to:
- Syndicate content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content via RSS feeds to other web properties
Jetpack by WordPress.com
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 WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with loads of great functions.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to the 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 on Jetpack)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Distribute your content automatically to various social media networks.)
After all of the settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account options appear in the publishing box.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically get shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they will be automatically distributed online.)
To learn more about this plugin, visit this site: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting system lets your site users engage with your website or blog, post new comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content as part of an online community.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature with a 3rd-party commenting plugin that integrates with social media, helping to spread and share them around.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they like, +1, or tweet your content. 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 they can choose to include below their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv can attract more comments and improve user engagement on your website.)
For more details about using this handy plugin, go here:
Social LinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that allows you to automatically syndicate and drip-feed content, build backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate your content automatically to dozens of social sites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to over 30 online websites, including:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Diigo, Instapaper, Zotero, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Sett, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
Go here to learn more about this plugin: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get useful information about your content marketing efforts), we have written a detailed article listing many social media monitoring tools and technologies that are worth knowing about. To learn more, visit this page:
The above are just some examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating 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 Blueprint: Content Syndication Process – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins set up and configured, all you have to do to automatically bring traffic is post web content consistently.
If you need endless ideas for content that you can post on your website, then subscribe to our FREE 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 process. This step is covered in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Section Four
To continue reading, click on the link below:
***
"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie
***