Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new traffic automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part One, we provided an overview of the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is publish web content consistently to start generating new web traffic!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase of the traffic automation process. We explained 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 existing site was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we look at the configuration phase of this blueprint.
Here, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three we show you how to configure all the settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this step, we will show you how to set up various WordPress plugins that can get new traffic automatically to your site whenever you begin to publish fresh content.
Why You Should Consider Automating The Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which marketing expert you get your advice from, you could end up investing 1-2 hours or more per day posting content on social media.
Most business owners simply lack the time, human resources and financial means to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are recommending. If you are spending most of your time checking Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook in addition to writing content for your website or blog, how can anything else in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours simply keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: NFIB)
Small businesses spend most of their time 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 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent at least 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 was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was done today, the numbers 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 the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend more time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and budget and many business areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or StumbleUpon. These sites often will make decisions that impact your business without prior warning. Why invest so much time and effort building content on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other sites.
Automating systems and process to leverage time is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth channels for promoting and marketing a business online creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited marketing budgets, resources, and time. For example:
- Which marketing channels should you focus more of your budget, time, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting 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 share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that lets you automate the web traffic generation with WordPress.
With this formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should invest more time, efforts, and budget 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 recommend staying away from all black hat techniques, websites, solutions, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of services like Facebook, YouTube, Google, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t have to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
The focus of this article is 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 get additional exposure online from websites used 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 businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limited time, resources, and budget.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to different marketing channels one at a time can be very time-consuming!)
Why not choose this one 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:
- Automatically distribute content to social sites and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as described in Part 2. Then, expertly configure everything as explained in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you can then automate the process using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic System – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a few traffic-generation plugins that can:
- Distribute content to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content to other websites via RSS
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus and more as soon as you publish your content using a WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with loads of useful functions.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part Three …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
You can share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts on various social sites.)
After all settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings displayed in the publishing box.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically get shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they are automatically distributed online.)
To learn more about this great plugin, visit this site: Jetpack by WordPress.com
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting system that allows your blog readers to engage with your website, post new comments, reply to other users and engage with your content.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature with a 3rd-party plugin that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, using 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, plus1, or like your post. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they enter their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv Premium version can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your web site.)
Go here to learn more about the benefits of this powerful plugin:
Social Link Machine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a plugin that lets you automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to dozens of social websites, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – drip-feed your content to many authority platforms)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to dozens of authority websites, like:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Folkd, Kippt, Reddit, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Overblog, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
Go here to learn more about this plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get actionable information about your content marketing efforts), we have created a detailed article where we explore many social media tracking tools that are worth checking out and knowing about. Visit this page to learn more:
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 Automation System: Content Syndication Stage – Summary
Once you have your site and plugins set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do to automatically begin attracting web traffic is publish fresh content regularly.
If you need endless content ideas for your website, then subscribe to our email training course 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 covered in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Part 4
To read the rest of this article series, click here:
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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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