Welcome to Part 4 of our Web 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, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is add great content on a regular basis to automatically start generating more traffic!)
In Part Two, we focus on the setup phase of the blueprint. We explain 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 site is built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In Part 3, we look at configuring the system.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you will configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, we will look at ways to automate the traffic-generation process with WordPress plugins.
Why Automating The Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on which online marketing guru you listen to, you could find yourself trying to spend an hour or two (or more) per day promoting your business on social media.
Most businesses simply lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise. If you spend half your day posting updates on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook in addition to researching and writing articles for your website or blog, how will you get anything else 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)
Many business owners spend most of their working hours simply 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 make sales in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent around six hours per week on social media (the other half of businesses surveyed that used 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 most likely be even 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 their most time-consuming online activity.
(Small businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, marketing budget, and time and many different business areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on various social websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. These sites can make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other websites.
Automating systems and process to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the availability of so many new channels for promoting and marketing a business creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited time, marketing budget, and resources. For example:
- Which of these channels do you focus more efforts, budget, and your time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting your own domain?
- 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 we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method for automating the traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this formula, 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 online marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should invest more efforts, time, and your budget on,
- Invest most of your 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 recommend avoiding black hat websites, methods, tools, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the terms of service and policies of companies like LinkedIn, Facebook, Google.
(Automating your web traffic does not have to involve using black hat methods!)
The focus of this article is not to game web services or flaunt their terms of service, but to show you how to be smart with your limited resources and automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and marketing efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites 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, 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 resources.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to individual channels can be very time-consuming!)
Why not use this time-saving approach 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 services.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content to other blogs and online 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as shown in Part 2. Then, configure things as explained in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then automate your content distribution with plugins such as the ones discussed in the following section.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some examples of plugins that can help to:
- Syndicate content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically to other sites via RSS feeds
Jetpack
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 great features.
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 automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Distribute your content to various social media accounts.)
After configuring all plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings displayed in your post publishing area.)
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 you with an automated and hands-free way to create more exposure online for your content on social media networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting function that lets your visitors engage with your web site, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions as part of an online community.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature using a number of 3rd-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share them around.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can create more user engagement on your website or blog. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like using keywords in the username, backlinks, the ability to add twitter usernames to comments, and social enticements for sharing content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they type their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can choose to include with their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your web site.)
To learn more about this plugin, go here:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a plugin that lets you automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate content to many authority platforms)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to over 30 online sites, including:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Plurk, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about this handy plugin, visit the plugin website: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get actionable information about your content marketing campaigns), we have written a comprehensive article on social media monitoring tools that are worth knowing about here:
The above are just some examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating and syndicating 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 Automation System: Content Syndication Process – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do then to automatically start generating more traffic is post content on a consistent basis.
If you need endless great ideas for posting content on your website, then subscribe to our email training series here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as you can. This step is addressed in the next article in our WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Part Four
To continue reading about this topic, click here:
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