Welcome to Part Four of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic generating machine using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part One of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to bring more traffic is publish great content regularly!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to start 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 existing website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In Part 3, we look at the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure all the settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this article, we will look at ways to automate traffic generation using a number of plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate The Traffic Generation
Depending on which marketing expert you get your advice from, you could end up investing 1-2 hours or more every day promoting your business on social media.
Most business owners simply lack the time, resources and financial means to run a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts recommend doing. If you spent most of your time checking LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook in addition to planning and writing content for your website or blog, how would you get anything else in your business done?
(Keeping a business up and running is how most small businesses spend their time. Infographic: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many business owners spend most of their time 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.
A study of small businesses conducted 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 was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was done today, the numbers would most likely be even higher.
- More than half of all small businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more to create a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media was their most time-consuming online activity.
(Small businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time marketing and promoting themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, marketing budget, and time and many different areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other 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 don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or StumbleUpon. These companies often will make decisions that impact your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building content on someone else’s asset? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can control your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other sites.
Automating processes to leverage time is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increased availability of hundreds of new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited resources, time, and budget. For example:
- Which channels should you invest more of your efforts, budget, and your time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not control (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring 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 Generation Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy for automating 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 web marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more of your efforts, budget, and time on,
- Invest most of your time and efforts 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 urge you to avoid using black hat websites, methods, solutions, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of companies like Facebook, Google, YouTube, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t require using black hat methods!)
What we are focusing here is not to game online services or flaunt their terms of service, but to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing 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
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, many businesses lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited budget, time, and resources.
So, instead of posting content to each channel, which can be extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to services individually can be very time-consuming!)
Why not do this 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:
- Distribute content automatically to social media services and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content automatically 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 get all this done?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as described in Part 2. Then, expertly configure your site settings as explained in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you then automate your content distribution with plugins such as the ones discussed in the next section.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic System – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at a few WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Syndicate content to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically via RSS feeds to other online properties
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ 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 functions.
After installing Jetpack, 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)
You can share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts on various social networks.)
After all of the plugin and account settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account details displays in your Publish box.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically get shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they are automatically syndicated online.)
Go here to learn more about using this plugin: Jetpack WordPress Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting system lets your visitors engage with your website, post new comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content as part of a community.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature with a third-party commenting plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they tweet, like, or plus1 your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they enter their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can include below their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can help attract more comments and improve user engagement on your site.)
Go here to learn more about the benefits of this plugin:
Social Link Machine
(Social Link Machine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social LinkMachine is a plugin that allows you to syndicate your content to over 30 traffic-generating sites, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate your content automatically to dozens of authority sites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to dozens of authority platforms, like:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Linkagogo, Plurk, Reddit, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Overblog, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
Visit this site to learn more about this handy 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 comprehensive article where we explore over 30 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. Go here for more info:
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 System: Automated Content Syndication Stage – Summary
Once you have your website or blog and plugins set up and configured, all you have to do then to begin attracting web traffic is add new content on a regular basis.
We have created a complete email email-based training course designed to help you never run out of content ideas for your site:
Once you have expertly 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 article in the series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read the rest of this article, click here:
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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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