Welcome to Part Four of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to drive new traffic automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is publish content regularly to automatically drive traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing website was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we looked at the configuration phase of this blueprint.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you will configure all the settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, we will discuss ways to automate the traffic system with WordPress plugins.
Why Automate Your Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on who you get your advice from, you could find yourself spending 1-2 hours or more every day posting content on social media.
Most small businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise doing. If you spent hours checking LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook in addition to writing articles for your blog or website, how would anything else in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Image source: NFIB)
Small business owners spend most of their time just 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 conducted in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent at least six hours each week on social media (most of the other businesses surveyed using social media 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 done today, the figures would probably be significantly 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 the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Small businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time marketing and promoting themselves online in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to prioritize their time on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budgets, resources, and time and many areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on a number of social media websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. These companies often will make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on someone else’s asset? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other sites.
Automating business processes to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth channels for promoting and marketing a business creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited time, resources, and budget. For example:
- Which channels do you invest more of your budget, time, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that belong to other companies (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating The Web Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that allows you to automate the web traffic generation 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 web marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should focus more budget, time, and your efforts on,
- Invest most of your 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 recommend avoiding black hat strategies, sites, tools, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of companies like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not require using black hat methods!)
The focus of this article series is to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and marketing 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 that many businesses lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to individual marketing channels is very 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 the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social sites and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as explained in Part 2. Then, configure everything as explained 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 Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at a few plugins that can help:
- Syndicate content to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically via RSS to other web properties
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, GooglePlus, LinkedIn 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 Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part 3 …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
You can share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your content to several social media networks.)
After all settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account details show in your post publishing box.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it will be automatically shared online.)
Jetpack provides you with a hands-free way to get more exposure for your content online on social media sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting system allows your visitors to engage with your website, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature using 3rd-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to share and spread your content around.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they tweet, like, or +1 your content. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included at the bottom of their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website.)
For more details about the benefits of using this great plugin, visit the plugin site:
SocialLinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a WordPress plugin that allows you to automatically syndicate content to many authority platforms, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – drip-feed content to many traffic-generating websites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to many authority websites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Delicious, Folkd, Instapaper, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
To learn more about the benefits of using this handy plugin, go here: 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 comprehensive article where we explore over 30 social media monitoring tools and technologies that you may want to check out. For more information, go here:
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 Automation System: Content Syndication Phase – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site and plugins set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do is publish new content regularly to automatically begin bringing web traffic organically.
We have created a complete email email-based training course designed to help you never run out of content ideas for your web site:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as can be improved. This step is addressed in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read more, click on the link below:
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"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
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