Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to automate traffic to your website using the WordPress CMS.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part 1, we provide an overview of the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is publish content on a consistent basis to automatically begin attracting new traffic!)
In Part Two, we look at critical setup decisions. We explain 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 website was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In Part Three, we focused on the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure all the settings that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you will configure all the settings that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this section of the series, you will learn how to set up various plugins that can help get traffic automatically to your site simply by posting web content.
Why Automate The Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which marketing gurus you listen to, you could find yourself trying to spend 1-2 hours or more per day promoting your business on social media.
Most small businesses lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts recommend. If you spend half your day posting updates on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter in addition to planning and writing content for your blog or website, how will you get anything else in your business done?
(Keeping their business up and running is how most small businesses spend their working hours. Image source: NFIB)
Small businesses 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 done by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent around 6 hours each week on social media (the rest spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was done today, the numbers would most likely be even higher.
- More than half of all businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more creating a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media consumed the most time online.
(Businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend more time marketing and promoting themselves online in order to compete and survive, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budgets, resources, and time and many business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social media sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. These sites can and will make decisions that can significantly affect your business without prior warning. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on someone else’s real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Automating processes to leverage time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited time, budget, and resources. For example:
- Which channels should you focus more efforts, time, and budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring the benefits of building content on your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote 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 formula that lets you automate your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more of your 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 software, methods, websites, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of companies like Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not require using black hat methods!)
The focus of this series of articles is not to game online services or flaunt their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and 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, most business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited resources, budget, and time.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to services one by one is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not use a smarter, time-saving strategy like the one shown below 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 your content distribution to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social channels and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content automatically to other blogs and web 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress website as shown in Part 2. Then, expertly configure your site settings as explained in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you then automate various processes with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic System – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some examples of WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Distribute content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically to other blogs via RSS feeds
Jetpack by WordPress.com
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, GooglePlus, 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 useful functions.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (set up in Part 3.) …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack – Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Share your content on various social networks.)
After all settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize options in the Publish section.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically be shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new posts are automatically shared online.)
Go here to learn more about this plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting function that lets your blog readers engage with your website or blog, post comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature using third-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to share and spread your content around.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they tweet, like, or plus1 your post. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they are entering their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included at the bottom of their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website.)
Go here for more details about using this plugin:
Social Link Machine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin that allows you to automatically syndicate content, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate your content automatically to many authority sites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to dozens of social websites, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Folkd, Instapaper, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
To learn more about this powerful plugin, go here: 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 that are worth checking out and knowing about. For more information, go here:
The above are just a few 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 Automation Blueprint: Automated Content Distribution Process – Summary
Once your website and plugins have been configured and set up, all you then need to do is add content consistently to drive more traffic.
If you need endless content ideas for your website, then subscribe to our FREE email training course on growing your business with content marketing here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as can be improved. This step is explained in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Part 4
To read more, click here:
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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