Welcome to Part 4 of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to drive new visitors automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part One, we provided an overview of the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is add fresh content regularly to automatically begin attracting new web traffic!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase of the blueprint. We helped you understand the best way to get started 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 website was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we discussed the configuration phase of the automation system.
Here, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 you will configure all the settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this article, we will look at ways to automate the traffic system using a number of WordPress plugins.
Why You Should Consider Automating The Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on who you get your advice from, you could end up trying to spend a couple of hours or more every day posting content on social media, as well as trying to manage your business, your content and your online presence.
Many small business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are recommending. If you were to spend all of your time posting updates on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing articles for your blog or website, how could you get anything else in your business done?
(Small businesses 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 trying to keep their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
Research conducted in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent 6 or more hours per week on social media (the other half of businesses surveyed using 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 survey was conducted 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 consumed the most time online.
(Businesses are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time promoting and marketing themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited time, marketing budgets, and resources and many business areas to focus on have 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 a number of social media sites, 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 companies can and will make decisions that can significantly impact your business without prior notification. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can control your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other online accounts.
Automating business systems and processes to leverage time is not new. Businesses have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the availability of hundreds of new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited resources, budgets, and time. For example:
- Which of these channels should you invest more efforts, budget, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you ultimately have no control over (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula 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 or blog and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more budget, efforts, and time 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 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 that you stay away from all black hat sites, techniques, software, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of services like Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not have to involve the use of black hat methods!)
The purpose of this article series is not to game web 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 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 small business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different channels is 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 channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social sites and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as shown in Part Two. Then, configure it as described in Part Three. After all this is in place, you can then automate the content distribution with plugins like the ones listed below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at a number of WordPress plugins that can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content via RSS feeds to other blogs
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 great functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part Three …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Distribute your content automatically to several social sites.)
After all of the settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings show in the post publishing area.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they are automatically shared online.)
Visit the plugin site to learn more about the benefits of using this plugin: Jetpack WordPress Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting feature that allows your site users to engage with your website, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature using a 3rd-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates your comments with social media, helping to spread and share them online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can create more user engagement on your web site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like using keywords in the name, search-indexable backlinks, adding twitter names to comments, and social enticements for content-sharing. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they are entering their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included below their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your website.)
To learn more about this plugin, go here:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – Content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a plugin for WordPress that allows you to syndicate content to many authority websites, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate your content to over 30 social platforms)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to dozens of authority platforms, like:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Linkagogo, Plurk, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Sett, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
Go here to learn more about this handy plugin: SocialLinkMachine
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 comprehensive article where we explore over 30 social media measurement tools and technologies that you may want to check out. More info:
The above are just some 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 Automation Blueprint: Automated Content Sharing Process – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been fully set up and configured, all you then have to do is publish content on a regular basis to begin attracting more traffic organically.
If you need topics for posting content on your website, then subscribe to our email training series on content marketing 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 explained in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read more, click on the link below:
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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