Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic machine using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part One, we described the traffic automation process, and explained 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 is add new content regularly to begin attracting traffic!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase of the traffic automation blueprint. 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 with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we discussed important configuration decisions.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three we show you how to configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this step, we will look at ways to automate traffic generation using a number of plugins.
Why You Should Consider Automating The Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which online marketing experts you listen to, you could end up trying to spend an hour or two every day (or more) posting content on social media, as well as trying to run your business, creating content and managing your online presence.
Many businesses simply lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are recommending. If you spend most of your time checking LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter in addition to planning and writing content for your blog or website, how will you get anything in your business done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours just keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses 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.
A study of small businesses done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent around 6 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 survey 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.
(Businesses are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time marketing and promoting themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and budget and many business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other important thing to consider 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 companies can and will make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building content on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can control your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other online properties.
Investing in automation to leverage time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increased availability of so many new channels for promoting and marketing a business online creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited time, resources, and budget. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels do you focus more efforts, budget, and your time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that do not belong to you (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring the benefits of building content on your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that allows you to automate your web traffic generation with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more of your time, efforts, and your budget on,
- Invest most of your time building your own asset 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 staying away from all black hat tools, sites, strategies, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of companies like Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not need to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this series of articles is not to game 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 efforts, and get additional exposure online from websites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, most small businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts recommend. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, time, and resources.
So, instead of posting content to each different channel, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different 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 one-time, and automate the distribution of your content to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social sites and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content 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 WordPress site as described in Part 2. Then, configure things as explained in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then connect all of the dots with plugins like the ones shown below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a few plugins that can help:
- Distribute content to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically to other blogs via RSS feeds
Jetpack Plugin
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 loads of great functions.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (set up in Part 3.) …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your content automatically to several social accounts.)
After all settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account options displayed in the post publishing box.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically get shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they are automatically shared online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides a hands-free way to create more exposure for your content online on social media websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting feature that allows your visitors to engage with your site, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature using 3rd-party commenting plugins that integrate your comments with social media, helping to spread and share them around.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they like, tweet, or +1 your content. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they enter their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can include with their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your site.)
Go here to learn more about this plugin:
Social Link Machine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a plugin that allows you to syndicate content to dozens of traffic-generating platforms, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed your content automatically to dozens of authority websites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to many social websites, including:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Linkagogo, Plurk, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
Visit the plugin site for more details about using this great plugin: 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 campaigns), we have written a detailed article listing several social media tracking tools that will help you identify new trends and opportunities, track competitor activity, see what online conversations are taking place that can affect your business,etc. For more information, go here:
The above are just a few examples of the many content distribution plugins that are available to WordPress users.
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 Sharing Process – Summary
Once you have your website or blog and plugins configured and fully set up, all you need to do to automatically attract traffic is publish new content consistently.
We have created a complete email training series aimed at helping you never run out of great content for your site:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is covered in the next article in the WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read the rest of this article series, click here:
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"Learning WordPress has been a huge stumbling block for me. I've been looking for something that covers absolutely everything but doesn't cost an arm and a leg. Thank you so much ... you have just provided me with what I have been looking for! Truly appreciated!" - Tanya
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