Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to create an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part One, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is publish web content consistently to attract new web traffic!)
In Part Two, we looked at critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part Three, we discuss important configuration decisions.
In this step, we configure all the settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, we will look at ways to automate traffic generation using various WordPress plugins.
Why Automating The Traffic Generation Makes Sense
Depending on who you get your advice from, you could find yourself spending a couple of hours per day (or more) promoting your business on social media.
Most business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise doing. If you were to spend most of your time posting updates on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter in addition to researching and writing articles for your website or blog, how would anything in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many businesses spend most of their working hours just keeping 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.
A study of small businesses conducted in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent at least six hours per week on social media (the other half 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 conducted today, the numbers would probably 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 consumed the most time online.
(Businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to prioritize their time on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited budget, time, and resources and many areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on a number of social media 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 companies often will make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on someone else’s real estate? With WordPress, you can control your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other websites.
Investing in business automation to leverage time is not new. Businesses have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increased availability of so many new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited marketing budgets, resources, and time. For example:
- Which channels do you invest more budget, time, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that belong to other companies (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring 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-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula for automating the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should invest more of your efforts, time, and your budget on,
- Invest most of your time and efforts 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 urge that you stay away from all black hat methods, solutions, websites, and anything designed to “game” or violate the policies and terms of service of sites like Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t require the use of black hat techniques!)
The focus of this article series is to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and increase your exposure online to websites frequented by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that most small business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of posting content to different services one at a time, which can be very time-consuming …
(Posting content to services one at a time can be very time-consuming!)
Why not opt for 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 content once, and automate your content distribution to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social sites and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content 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 site as described in Part 2. Then, get everything configured as described in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then automate your content distribution with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a look now at some examples of traffic-generation plugins that can help to:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content via RSS feeds to other blogs
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, 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 useful features.
After Jetpack has been installed, 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 …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your posts to various social media sites.)
After all of the settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize options displayed in your Publish box.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically get shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they will be automatically distributed online.)
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, go here: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting function allows your visitors to engage with your website, post new comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature with 3rd-party plugins that integrate your comments with social media, helping to spread and share your content around.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your web site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like SEO backlinks, the ability to add twitter names to comments, ability to use keywords in the username, and social enticements for sharing your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they are typing their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can include with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your web site.)
To learn more about this plugin, go here:
Social Link Machine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that allows you to syndicate and drip-feed content to dozens of traffic-generating sites, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed content to many social platforms)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to over 30 online sites, like:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Instapaper, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Overblog, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
To learn more about the benefits of this WordPress plugin, visit this website: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get useful information about your content distribution campaigns), we have written a detailed article on 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 can affect your business, etc, see what conversations are taking place online that can affect your business,etc. Go here to learn more about this:
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 Blueprint: Automated Content Sharing Phase – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been set up and configured, all you have to do then to automatically attract traffic is post web content on a consistent basis.
If you need endless content ideas for your website, we recommend subscribing to our FREE email training course on growing your business online with content marketing here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is explained in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
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