Welcome to Part 4 of our Web 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 1 of this article series, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to automatically generate traffic is publish web content regularly!)
In Part Two, 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 existing site was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In Part 3, we focused on the configuration phase of the blueprint.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, we will discuss ways to automate traffic generation with WordPress plugins.
Why You Should Consider Automating The Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which marketing expert you talk to, you could find yourself investing an hour or two every day (or more) posting content on social media in addition to trying to manage your business, your content and your web presence.
Most businesses simply lack the time, human resources and budget to employ the services of a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts recommend. If you are spending hours checking Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook in addition to researching and writing articles for your blog or website, how will you get anything else in your business done?
(Keeping a business running is how most small business owners spend their working hours. Infographic: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many business owners spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s 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:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent at least 6 hours each week on social media (the rest 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 done today, the figures would probably 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 consumed the most time online.
(Businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend more time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to focus their time on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited budget, resources, 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 various 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 LinkedIn. These companies often will make decisions that can significantly impact your business without prior warning. Why invest so much time and effort building a business 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 business processes to leverage time is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increasing availability of so many 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 time, marketing budget, and resources. For example:
- Which channels should you invest more of your budget, time, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that do not belong to you (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that allows you to automate your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should focus more of your time, efforts, 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 urge you to avoid using black hat websites, tools, strategies, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of companies like Facebook, Google, Pinterest, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t require the use of black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this article series is 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 that most small business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts recommend. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of posting content to each marketing channel, which can be extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to individual channels can be very time-consuming!)
Why not do this 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 services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social sites and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) 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, configure your site settings as described in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then automate the process using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a number of plugins that can be used to:
- Syndicate content to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically via RSS feeds to other web properties
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+, LinkedIn and more as soon as you publish your content using a 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 your WordPress.com account …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
You can share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your posts to several social media sites.)
After configuring all of the account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings displays in your post publishing area.)
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 posts are automatically shared online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides you with a hands-free way to get more exposure for your content online on social networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting system lets your visitors interact with your site, post new comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature using a third-party commenting plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates with social media, helping to spread and share your content online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can improve user engagement on your website or blog. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like the ability to add twitter names to comments, using keywords in the user name, SEO backlinks, and social enticements for sharing content. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they type 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 encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your web site.)
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, visit this website:
Social LinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
SocialLinkMachine is a plugin that lets you syndicate and drip-feed content to dozens of traffic-generating platforms, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed content to dozens of traffic-generating platforms)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to many online websites, including:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Folkd, Kippt, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
For more information about using this WordPress plugin, visit this site: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get useful information about your content distribution efforts), we have written a detailed article where we explore over 30 social media measurement tools that are worth checking out and knowing about. Go here for more info:
The above are just a few examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating and syndicating 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: Automated Content Distribution Phase – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins configured and set up, all you need to do then to attract traffic is publish new content consistently.
We have created an entire email email-based training course designed to help you come up with limitless content ideas for posting to your site:
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 System series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read more, 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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