Welcome to Part 4 of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to drive traffic automatically to your website using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part One of this article series, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to begin bringing web traffic is add fresh content on a consistent basis!)
In Part 2, we focused on 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 website, and what to do if your website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In Part 3, we focused on the configuration phase of the blueprint.
Here, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part 4, we discuss ways to automate the traffic-getting process using WordPress plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which marketing gurus 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 lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are prescribing. If you spend half your day posting updates on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook in addition to planning and writing content for your website or blog, how will you get anything else in your business done?
(Small businesses spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many businesses spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
Research conducted by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent 6 or more hours per week on social media (the other half 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 figures would most likely be significantly 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 was their most time-consuming online activity.
(Businesses are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: 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 prioritize their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited budgets, resources, and time 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 social media sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. These sites can and will make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without prior notification. Why invest so much effort and time 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 sites.
Automating business systems and processes to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the dawn of 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, resources, and marketing budgets. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels do you invest more of your budget, efforts, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that belong to other companies (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that lets you automate your web traffic generation with WordPress.
With this formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should invest more of your time, budget, and efforts on,
- Invest most of your time building your own asset and still benefit from other people’s marketing channels.
Many automated 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 software, websites, strategies, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of companies like Twitter, Facebook, Google.
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t have to involve using black hat methods!)
What we are focusing here is not to manipulate online services or bypass their terms of service, but 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 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 that many small business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited budget, time, and resources.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to individual marketing channels can be very time-consuming!)
Why not choose a smarter, time-saving strategy like the one shown below 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 media services and 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 get all this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as described in Part Two. Then, expertly configure it as explained in Part Three. After all this is in place, you can then automate the content distribution 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 Traffic Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a number of WordPress plugins that can be used to:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically via RSS feeds to other sites
Jetpack by WordPress.com
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+, 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 useful functions.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
Configure this section to share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Distribute your posts automatically to various social media sites.)
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 details show in your Publish section.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically be shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they are automatically distributed online.)
This is a hands-free way to create more exposure online for your content on social media networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting function allows your blog readers to interact with your website, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature using a 3rd-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread them online.
For example, a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help attract more comments and improve user engagement on your website. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like using keywords in the user name, SEO backlinks, adding twitter usernames to comments, and social enticements for content-sharing. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they are typing their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which can be included below their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv Premium version can help attract more comments and traffic and create more user engagement on your site.)
To learn more about the benefits of using this plugin, visit this site:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that allows you to drip-feed your content, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate your content to dozens of traffic-generating sites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to dozens of social platforms, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Linkagogo, Kippt, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
Go here to learn more about this plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get useful information about your content distribution efforts), we have written a detailed article on social media tracking tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives. For more info, 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: Content Distribution Phase – Summary
Once you have your website or blog and plugins fully set up and configured, all you need to do then to start attracting web traffic is publish fresh content consistently.
If you need help coming up with endless topics for content that you can post on your website or blog, we recommend subscribing to our FREE email training course on content marketing here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is addressed in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Section Four
To keep reading this article, click on the link below:
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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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