Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to create an automated web traffic generating machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part One, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to begin attracting new traffic is publish content regularly!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase. We explained the best way to start 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 site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we look at important configuration decisions.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 you will configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this section of the article series, we look at ways to automate the traffic-generation process using a number of WordPress plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic Generation
Depending on who you get your advice from, you could end up spending an hour a day (or more) posting content on social media while also trying to manage your business, your content and your web presence.
Many business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts recommend. If you were to spend hours posting updates on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter in addition to writing articles for your website or blog, how would anything else in your business get done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small businesses spend their time. Infographic source: NFIB)
Small business owners spend most of their working hours simply 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 conducted in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent six or more hours each week on social media (the other half spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was conducted today, the figures would most likely be 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 spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time promoting and marketing themselves online in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to prioritize their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, budget, and time and many different business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on a number of social media 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 companies can and will make decisions that affect your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much effort and time building content on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other websites.
Investing in automation to save 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 many new channels for promoting and marketing a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited time, resources, and budget. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you invest more time, budget, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not control (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that allows you to automate the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, 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 web marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should invest more time, efforts, and your budget 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 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 urge you to avoid using black hat solutions, strategies, sites, and anything designed to “game” or violate the policies and terms of service of companies like YouTube, Facebook, Google.
(Web traffic automation does not need to involve using black hat methods!)
The focus 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 limited resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites used by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that most business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts recommend. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to marketing channels one at a time can be very time-consuming!)
Why not use this strategy 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 once, and automate your content distribution to all other services.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites 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 of this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as shown in Part Two. Then, get it configured as explained in Part 3. After all this is in place, you 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 Web Traffic Blueprint – Plugins
Let’s take a look now at some examples of traffic-generation plugins that can help:
- Syndicate content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content to other blogs via RSS
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus, 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 many useful features.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack – Publicize feature)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your content automatically to several social sites.)
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 Publish section.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically get shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new posts are automatically shared online.)
Jetpack provides you with a hands-free, automated way to get more exposure for your content online on social media websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting feature allows your visitors to engage with your site, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature with a 3rd-party plugin that integrates your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content around.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they tweet, plus1, or like your post. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they type their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which they can include with their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and improve user engagement on your website.)
To learn more about this powerful plugin, go here:
Social LinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a plugin for WordPress that lets you drip-feed content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate your content automatically to over 30 authority websites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to many social sites, including:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Instapaper, Reddit, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Sett, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
To learn more about using this powerful plugin, visit this website: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get useful information about your content distribution efforts), we have created a detailed article listing a number of social media tracking tools and technologies that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives. For more information, go here:
The above are just some 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 System: Automated Content Syndication Phase – Summary
Once your site and plugins have been fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do to automatically attract more traffic is publish content regularly.
We have created a complete email series designed to help you come up with unlimited content for posting to your site:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is covered in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read more, click here:
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
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