Welcome to Part Four of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to create an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part 1 of this series, we describe the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to automatically start generating new web traffic is post content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we focused on critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to start 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 was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we discussed configuring the system.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure all the settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this step, we will look at ways to automate the traffic system with different WordPress plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic Generation
Depending on which expert you listen to, you could find yourself investing a couple of hours or more every day posting content on social media.
Most business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts recommend doing. If you spend half your day checking LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook in addition to planning and writing content for your blog or website, how does anything else in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their working hours trying to keep their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
Marketing research conducted by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent at least 6 hours per week on social media (most of the other 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 survey was conducted today, the figures would most likely be even 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 their most time-consuming online activity.
(Businesses are spending 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 pressure on businesses to focus their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited time, budgets, and resources and many 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 LinkedIn. These sites can make decisions that can significantly impact your business without prior notification. Why invest so much effort and time building content on rented 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.
Investing in automation to leverage time is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited time, resources, and marketing budget. For example:
- Which channels should you invest more of your budget, time, and efforts 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 neglecting your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic Generation With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that lets you automate your traffic generation with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more of your budget, time, and efforts on,
- Invest most of your time building your own asset 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 you to avoid using black hat solutions, strategies, websites, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of services like Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t require the use of black hat techniques!)
The focus of this article series is not to manipulate web services or break their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and marketing efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites 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, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts advise. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited time, budget, and resources.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels one by one is extremely 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 your content distribution to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media channels and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) automatically 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 this done?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress website or blog as explained in Part 2. Then, configure it as described in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you can then automate the content distribution with plugins like the ones discussed in the section below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some traffic-generating WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Syndicate content to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically via RSS feeds to other websites
Jetpack Plugin
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 plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many useful features.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (as described in Part 3.) …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts automatically on several social networks.)
After all of the account and plugin settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account options in your Publish area.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it is automatically syndicated online.)
This is a hands-free, automated way to create more exposure online for your content on social websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress native commenting system allows your site users to interact with your website, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature using a number of third-party plugins that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content around.
For example, a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they tweet, like, or +1 your post. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they enter their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can include with their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can help attract more comments and visitors and improve user engagement on your website or blog.)
Go here to learn more about this great plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – Content distribution plugin for WordPress)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin that lets you automatically syndicate and drip-feed content, build backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate and drip-feed your content to over 30 authority websites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to dozens of authority platforms, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Delicious, Linkagogo, Kippt, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Sett, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
Go here for more details about the benefits of this plugin: Social Link Machine
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 detailed article listing a number of social media measurement tools and technologies that will help you keep track of online trends, monitor competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that affect your business, etc, see what online conversations are taking place that could affect your business,etc. Visit this page for more information:
The above are just some examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating the distribution of your content online.
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 WordPress site and plugins have been fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then to automatically attract traffic is add fresh content on a regular basis.
We have created an entire email email-based training course designed to help you come up with unlimited content ideas for posting to your website or blog:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is addressed in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Part Four
To continue reading, click here:
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