Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to turn your website into an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part One of this article series, we 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 to automatically bring more web traffic is publish new content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we look at the setup phase. We explain 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 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 site on your domain)
In Part 3, we look at the configuration phase of the blueprint.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you will configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, we look at ways to automate traffic generation with WordPress plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which business marketing expert you get your advice from, you could find yourself trying to spend an hour or more a day promoting your business on social media.
Most business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to run a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts recommend doing. If you spend hours checking LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter in addition to planning and writing content for your website or blog, how does anything else in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: NFIB)
Small business owners 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 remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
Research conducted in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent 6 or more hours each 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 figures would most likely 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 their most time-consuming online activity.
(Small businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend more time promoting and marketing themselves online in order to compete and survive, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other areas …
(Businesses with limited time, budget, and resources and many different business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social 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 often 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, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other sites.
Automating business systems and processes to leverage time is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited budget, resources, and time. For example:
- Which marketing channels should you focus more budget, efforts, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, 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 The Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that lets you automate your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more budget, efforts, and your time 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 techniques, websites, software, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the policies and terms of service of companies like Pinterest, Facebook, Google.
(Web traffic automation does not need to involve using black hat methods!)
What we are focusing here 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 increase your exposure online to 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 many online experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, time, and resources.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different services one by one is very time-consuming!)
Why not opt for this time-saving 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 one-time, and automate the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media services and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) 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 or blog as shown in Part 2. Then, configure everything as shown in Part 3. After all this is in place, you then automate the content distribution using plugins such as the ones listed in the section below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a number of WordPress plugins that can help:
- Post content to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content via RSS feeds to other online properties
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, GooglePlus, 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 many great functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (which you would have set up in Part Three.) …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Distribute your posts to various social sites.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings displays in your Publish area.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it is automatically syndicated online.)
Jetpack provides a hands-free, automated way to create more exposure for your content online on social media websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress commenting feature allows your visitors to interact with your web site, post new comments, reply to other users and engage with your content as part of an online community.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature with a third-party commenting plugin that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread them online.
For example, using a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like ability to use keywords in the username, social enticements for sharing content, search-indexable backlinks, and adding twitter names to comments. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they are entering their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which they can choose to include below their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your site.)
To learn more about this great plugin, visit this site:
Social Link Machine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a WordPress plugin that lets you syndicate content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate content to dozens of online websites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to many online platforms, including:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Folkd, Plurk, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Overblog, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
To learn more about this plugin, visit the plugin website: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get actionable information about your content distribution campaigns), we have written a detailed article where we explore many social media tracking tools that you may want to check out. More information:
The above are just a few 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: Content Sharing Stage – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been expertly configured and set up, all you have to do to automatically attract new web traffic is post new content regularly.
If you need endless content ideas for your site, then subscribe to our FREE email training series here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is covered in the next article in the WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Part 4
To keep reading this article, 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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