Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to create an automated traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part 1, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is add new content regularly to attract more web traffic!)
In Part Two, we discussed critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to get started 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 has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part Three, we look at the configuration phase.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part 4, we will look at ways to automate the traffic system with plugins.
Why Automate The Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on which online marketing guru you get your advice from, you could find yourself trying to spend an hour or two (or more) every day promoting your business on social media.
Most small business owners simply lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise. If you are spending half your day checking Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter in addition to researching and writing articles for your blog or website, how will you get anything in your business done?
(Small businesses spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and make sales in order to survive.
Research done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent 6 or more hours per 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 research was conducted today, the figures 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 consumed the most time online.
(Businesses are spending more time marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of 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, time, and resources and many different business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or StumbleUpon. These sites often will make decisions that can significantly impact your business without prior notification. Why invest so much time and effort building content on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can control your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Automating systems and process to save time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the availability of so many new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited marketing budget, time, and resources. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you invest more time, efforts, and budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not own (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Web Traffic Generation With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy for automating your traffic generation with WordPress.
With this formula, 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 channels you should invest more of your budget, time, and your efforts 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 that you stay away from all black hat tools, websites, strategies, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not require the use of black hat methods!)
The purpose of this article is to show you how to be smart with your limited resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from websites used by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that many 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 to be strategic and work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of posting content to each channel, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to marketing channels one at a time can be very time-consuming!)
Why not choose this method 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 your content distribution to all other services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social services and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content 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 website or blog as explained in Part Two. Then, get it configured as described in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then connect all of the dots using plugins such as the ones shown in the section below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a few traffic-generating WordPress plugins that can help:
- Syndicate content to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content via RSS feeds to other blogs
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, 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 loads of useful features.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part 3 …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize feature)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your posts to various social networks.)
After configuring all of the plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account options displayed in the publishing area.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they will be automatically shared online.)
For more information about the benefits of using this plugin, go here: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress native commenting feature allows your blog readers to interact with your web site, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content as part of a community.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature using 3rd-party plugins that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content online.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can improve user engagement on your web site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like using keywords in the name, search-indexable backlinks, adding twitter usernames to comments, and social enticements for content-sharing. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they type their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can choose to include with their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your web site.)
Visit this website to learn more about using this powerful plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that lets you automatically syndicate your content, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate your content to many authority sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to dozens of authority sites, such as:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Folkd, Instapaper, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
Visit this site to learn more about the benefits of this great plugin: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get actionable information about your content marketing campaigns), we have created a detailed article listing several social media tracking tools and technologies that will help you keep track of online trends, monitor competitor activity, see what online conversations are taking place that can affect your business, etc, see what conversations are taking place online that can affect your business,etc. For more information, go here:
The above are just some examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating and sharing 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 Sharing Stage – Summary
Once you have your site and plugins fully set up and configured, all you then have to do to automatically bring more web traffic is publish new content on a regular basis.
We have created an entire email series aimed at helping you never run out of content for your website or blog:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as you can. This step is addressed in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read the rest of this article, click here:
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