Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to drive visitors automatically to your site using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part 1 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 blog, all you have to do is publish new content regularly to automatically attract new traffic!)
In Part 2, we discuss critical setup decisions. 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 site, and what to do if your existing website is built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In Part Three, we look at the configuration phase.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you will configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, we explain how to set up various plugins that can help bring visitors automatically to your website when you begin adding content consistently.
Why You Should Automate The Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which marketing gurus you listen to, you could end up investing 1-2 hours every day (or more) promoting your business on social media while also running your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Many small business owners lack the time, 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 marketing experts advise doing. If you are spending half your day posting updates on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook in addition to planning and writing articles for your website or blog, how can anything else in your business get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their working hours simply keeping their businesses up and running. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many business owners spend most of their time 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 grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent around 6 hours per week on social media (the other half spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This usage of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was conducted today, the numbers would probably be significantly higher.
- More than half of all small businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more to create a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media was the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend more time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and budgets and many business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social websites, all of your efforts are going 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 impact your business without consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can control your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other websites.
Automating business systems and processes to leverage time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the availability of many new channels for promoting and marketing a business creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited budget, time, and resources. For example:
- Which of these channels do you invest more efforts, time, and your budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, 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 The Web Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method for automating the web traffic generation 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 online marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more of your time, efforts, and your budget on,
- Invest most of your 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 recommend avoiding black hat methods, websites, software, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of services like Twitter, Facebook, Google.
(Web traffic automation doesn’t require using black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing here is to show you how to be smart with your limited resources and automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and marketing efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites used by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen in the previous section how most small business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts recommend. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of choosing this approach …
(Posting content to different marketing channels is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose a smarter, time-saving strategy like this 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 sites and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) automatically to other blogs and online 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 explained in Part 2. Then, expertly configure your site settings as explained in Part 3. After all this is in place, you then connect all of the dots 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 Traffic Automation System – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at some traffic-generating plugins that can help to:
- Syndicate content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content to other websites via RSS feeds
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, GooglePlus and more as soon as you publish your content using a WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with loads of great features.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part Three …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
You can share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Distribute your posts to several social sites.)
After all 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 details appear in your publishing area.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically get shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new content is automatically shared online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides a hands-free, automated way to create more exposure online for your content on social media websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting system that lets your site users interact with your site, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature with a third-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates your comments with social media, helping to spread and share your content online.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they tweet, +1, or like your content. 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 include at the bottom of their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your website or blog.)
Visit this website to learn more about the benefits of using this plugin:
Social Link Machine
(Social LinkMachine – Content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a WordPress plugin that allows you to syndicate your content to over 30 social platforms, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed content to over 30 online platforms)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to dozens of traffic-generating websites, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Plurk, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Rebel Mouse, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about this plugin, visit the plugin site: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get actionable information about your content marketing campaigns), we have written a detailed article listing over 30 social media measurement tools that will help you keep track of online trends, monitor competitor activity, see what online conversations are taking place that can affect your business, etc, see what conversations are taking place online that affect your business,etc. 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: Automated Content Sharing Phase – Summary
Once your website and plugins have been fully set up and configured, all you then need to do to automatically start generating new traffic is publish fresh content consistently.
We have created a complete email course aimed at helping you come up with unlimited content for posting to your website:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as you can. This step is explained in the next section of our WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read the rest of this article series, click here:
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