Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part One, we describe the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to begin attracting new traffic is post content on a regular basis!)
In Part Two, we look at the setup phase. We explain the best way to get started 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 site was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we discussed important configuration decisions.
Here, we configure all the settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 you will configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, we explain how to set up various plugins that can bring web traffic automatically to your site when you begin publishing web content regularly.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic Generation
Depending on which expert you listen to, you could find yourself spending 1-2 hours per day (or more) posting content on social media.
Most businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts recommend. If you were to spend all of your time checking Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook in addition to researching and writing articles for your website or blog, how could you get anything in your business done?
(Keeping a business up and running is how most small business owners spend their working hours. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their working hours trying to keep 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 make sales in order to survive.
Marketing research conducted in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, 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 use of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was done today, the figures would most likely be even higher.
- More than half of all small businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more creating a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media consumed the most time online.
(Small businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend more 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 important areas …
(Businesses with limited time, budget, and resources and many different business areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another important 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 StumbleUpon. These sites can make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much time and effort building content on someone else’s real estate? With WordPress, you can control your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other sites.
Automating business systems and processes 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 exponential growth marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited time, budget, and resources. For example:
- Which of these channels do you invest more of your budget, efforts, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, 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 The Web Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that allows you to automate the web traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should invest more of your efforts, time, and 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 sites, methods, tools, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the policies and terms of service of services like Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, 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 so you can leverage your time and efforts, and increase your exposure online to websites frequented by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen in the previous section how many businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different services one by one can be 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 channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media services and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content to other blogs and web 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 2. Then, configure it as shown in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then automate the content distribution using plugins like the ones shown in the next section.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a few traffic-generating WordPress plugins that can help:
- Syndicate content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically to other web properties via RSS feeds
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and more as soon as you publish new content using a plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with loads of useful functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts automatically on several social media accounts.)
After all plugin and account settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize options displayed in your publishing section.)
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 you publish, your post is automatically syndicated online.)
Jetpack provides you with a hands-free way to get more exposure online for your content on social websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting feature lets your blog readers interact with your web site, post new comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature using 3rd-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments with social media, helping to spread and share them online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they like, plus1, or tweet your post. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they type their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which can be included with their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website.)
To learn more about this handy plugin, go here:
Social Link Machine
(Social LinkMachine – Content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a plugin that lets you automatically drip-feed your content, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed your content to dozens of social platforms)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to over 30 online platforms, such as:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Delicious, Linkagogo, Kippt, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, visit this website: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get useful information about your content marketing campaigns), or to learn more about social media measurement tools and technologies that are worth knowing about, see this article:
The above are just a few 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 System: Automated Content Sharing Process – Summary
Once your website or blog and plugins have been expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do is publish web content regularly to automatically generate traffic.
We have created an entire email series aimed at helping you come up with unlimited content ideas for your website:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as you can. This step is covered in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read the rest of this article, 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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