Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new visitors automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part One of this article series, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to generate web traffic is post new content on a regular basis!)
In Part 2, we discuss the setup phase of this blueprint. We explain the best way to start 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 was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we discuss the configuration phase of this process.
In this step, we configure all the settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you will configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part 4, we will show you how to set up various plugins that can help get new visitors automatically to your website.
Why Automating The Traffic Generation Makes Sense
Depending on which marketing guru you get your advice from, you could find yourself trying to spend an hour or two every day (or more) promoting your business on social media.
Most businesses simply lack the time, human resources and financial means to run a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts advise doing. If you were to spend hours posting updates on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook in addition to planning and writing articles for your blog or website, how would you get anything in your business done?
(Keeping a business running is how most small businesses spend their working hours. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their time keeping 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.
A study of small businesses done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent 6 or more hours each week on social media (most of the other businesses surveyed that used social media 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 figures would probably be significantly 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.
(Small businesses are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend more 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 equally important areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and marketing budget and many different areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another 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 companies often will make decisions that can significantly impact your business without consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on someone else’s asset? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other online accounts.
Automating business systems and processes to save time is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increasing availability of so many new channels for promoting and marketing a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited resources, time, and budgets. For example:
- Which of these channels should you focus more budget, efforts, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you ultimately have no control over (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that allows you to automate your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should focus more efforts, time, and your budget 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 that you stay away from all black hat software, sites, strategies, and anything designed to “game” or violate the policies and terms of service of services like Google, Facebook, Pinterest, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not require using black hat techniques!)
The focus of this article series is to show you how to be smart with your limited resources and automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from websites visited by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that many small business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited time, budget, and resources.
So, instead of posting content to different marketing channels, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different channels can be very 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 once, and automate your content distribution to all other services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social services and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content 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 2. Then, get everything configured as shown in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then connect all of the dots using plugins like the ones listed below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic System – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a number of traffic-generation WordPress plugins that can:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically to other web properties via RSS
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus 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 great functions.
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 …
(Jetpack – Publicize)
You can share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts on various social networks.)
After all of the account and plugin settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings in your publishing area.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your posts are automatically syndicated online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides an automated and hands-free way to create more exposure for your content online on social sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress native commenting feature allows your site users to interact with your website, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions as part of an online community.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature with third-party plugins that integrate your comments with social media, helping to spread and share them around.
For example, a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like using keywords in the name, backlinks, social enticements for content sharing, and the ability to add twitter names to comments. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they are entering their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can choose to include with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website.)
Visit the plugin website to learn more about the benefits of using this powerful plugin:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
SocialLinkMachine is a WordPress plugin that allows you to automatically syndicate content to many online sites, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed content to over 30 traffic-generating platforms)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to many traffic-generating platforms, including:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Linkagogo, Plurk, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about this handy plugin, visit the plugin site: 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 distribution efforts), we have created a detailed article where we explore a number of social media measurement tools and technologies that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives. For more information, go here:
The above are just some examples of the many content distribution plugins that WordPress makes available.
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 System: Automated Content Distribution Phase – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do then to start generating traffic is post great content on a regular basis.
If you need great content ideas for your website or blog, we recommend subscribing to our FREE email training series here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is addressed in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Part 4
To continue reading, click on the link below:
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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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