Welcome to Part Four of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to turn a website into an automated traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part One of this series, we provided an overview of the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is post great content on a regular basis to automatically start driving web traffic!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase of this system. We helped you understand 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 website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In Part 3, we focus on configuring the system.
In this step, we configure all the settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure all the settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part 4, we will discuss ways to automate your traffic using a number of plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which marketing experts you listen to, you could find yourself trying to spend a couple of hours or more each day promoting your business on social media while also trying to manage your business, your content and your online presence.
Many businesses simply lack the time, human resources and financial means to employ the services of a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are advising. If you spend most of your time posting updates on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook in addition to writing content for your blog or website, how does anything in your business get done?
(Keeping their business up and running is how most small businesses spend their time. Infographic: NFIB)
Small businesses spend most of their time simply 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.
Research done by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent 6 or more 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 probably be 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 was the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Small businesses are spending more time marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time promoting and marketing themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other equally important areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budget, resources, and time and many business areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social media websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. These sites often will make decisions that can significantly affect your business without prior notification. Why invest so much time and effort building content on someone else’s asset? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other sites.
Automating business processes to save time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it since the dawn of 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 small business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited marketing budget, resources, and time. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you focus more of your efforts, budget, and your time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on your own domain?
- 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 method for automating the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and 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 time and 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 recommend avoiding black hat strategies, sites, solutions, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the policies and terms of service of services like Facebook, Google, YouTube, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not have to involve using black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this article series 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 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 most experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited resources, time, and budget.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to individual channels can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not use this approach 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 the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social channels and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) 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 this done?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as described in Part Two. Then, expertly configure your site settings as explained in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then automate the process using plugins such as the ones discussed below.
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 a few traffic-generation WordPress plugins that can be used to:
- Post content to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content to other websites via RSS
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, GooglePlus 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 installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part Three …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack – Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Publicize your posts automatically to several social accounts.)
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 account settings show in your publishing section.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically get shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your posts are automatically distributed online.)
Go here to learn more about the benefits of using this plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting function that lets your visitors interact with your web site, post new comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions as part of an online community.
You can expand the WordPress built-in commenting feature with a number of third-party plugins that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share your content around.
For example, using a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website or blog. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like adding twitter usernames to comments, backlinks, social enticements for sharing content, and ability to use keywords in the name. 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 at the bottom of their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website or blog.)
Visit this site to learn more about this great plugin:
Social Link Machine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget plugin that allows you to syndicate and drip-feed your content to over 30 traffic-generating sites, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate content to many online sites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to dozens of authority sites, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Folkd, Plurk, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Overblog, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
To learn more about this plugin, go here: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get actionable information about your content marketing campaigns), we have written a detailed article listing several social media monitoring tools 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 can affect your business,etc. Go here to learn more:
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 Automation Blueprint: Automated Content Distribution Stage – Summary
Once your site and plugins have been expertly configured and set up, all you need to do then to generate web traffic is post content on a regular basis.
If you need endless content ideas for your website or blog, we recommend subscribing to our FREE email training series on growing your business online with content marketing here:
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 WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part 4
To read more, click here:
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