Welcome to Part Four of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic generating machine using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part 1 of this article series, we provided an overview of the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is add new content on a regular basis to bring more web traffic!)
In Part 2, we focused on critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In Part 3, we look at the configuration phase.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this step, we will discuss ways to automate traffic generation using a number of plugins.
Why Automating The Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on which business marketing expert you listen to, you could find yourself investing an hour or two per day (or more) promoting your business on social media in addition to trying to run your business, creating content and managing your online presence.
Most business owners simply lack the time, human resources and budget to employ the services of a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are prescribing. If you spend half your day checking Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing content for your website or blog, how does anything else in your business get done?
(Keeping a business up and running is how most small business owners spend their working hours. 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 sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
Research done by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent at least six hours each 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 use of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was done today, the figures would probably be 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 the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Small businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend more time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to focus their time on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited budgets, time, and resources and many different business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social media sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These companies can make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without prior warning. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on someone else’s asset? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other online properties.
Investing in business automation to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increasing availability of so many new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited time, budgets, and resources. For example:
- Which channels do you focus more of your budget, efforts, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that allows you to automate the traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more time, budget, and your efforts on,
- Invest most of your 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 recommend avoiding black hat strategies, tools, websites, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the policies and terms of service of companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not need to involve the use of black hat methods!)
What we are focusing here is to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and marketing efforts, and increase your exposure online to websites used 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 most small businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts recommend 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 different channels is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose a smarter, time-saving approach like 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:
- Automatically distribute content to social sites and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) 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 of this done?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as explained in Part 2. Then, expertly configure it as explained in Part Three. After all this is in place, you can then connect all of the dots using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some plugins that can:
- Syndicate content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content to other blogs via RSS
Jetpack by WordPress.com
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, 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 the WordPress.com account set up in Part Three …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack – Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Distribute your content automatically to various social media networks.)
After configuring all of the account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account options displayed in your Publish area.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically be shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they are automatically syndicated online.)
Visit the plugin website to learn more about this plugin: Jetpack by WordPress.com
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting feature that lets your visitors engage with your website, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature with a 3rd-party plugin that integrates with social media, helping to spread and share them around.
For example, a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like social enticements for sharing your content, SEO backlinks, adding twitter handles to comments, and ability to use keywords in the name. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included with their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your web site.)
To learn more about the benefits of this WordPress plugin, go here:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget plugin that allows you to syndicate your content to dozens of social platforms, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed your content to many authority sites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to dozens of social websites, like:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Folkd, Kippt, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
Go here to learn more about the benefits of this handy 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 marketing campaigns), we have written a comprehensive article about social media monitoring tools that are worth checking out and knowing about. For more details, go here:
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 System: Content Syndication Phase – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins fully set up and configured, all you then need to do is post new content on a regular basis to bring more web traffic.
If you need endless content ideas for your web site, we recommend subscribing to our email training series here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is explained in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Section 4
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