Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part One, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to automatically begin attracting traffic is add fresh content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we look at critical setup decisions. We help 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 site, and what to do if your existing website is built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we focus on the configuration phase of this blueprint.
Here, we configure all the settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three we show you how to configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part 4, we discuss ways to automate the traffic-generation process using a number of plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate The Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on who you talk to, you could find yourself spending a couple of hours per day (or more) posting content on social media, as well as managing your business, your content and your online presence.
Many business owners simply lack the time, human resources and budget 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 recommending. If you spend all of your time checking Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn in addition to writing articles for your blog or website, how will you get anything in your business done?
(Keeping a business running is how most small business owners spend their time. Infographic source: NFIB)
Small businesses spend most of their working hours just keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses done in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent around 6 hours per 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 numbers would probably be even higher.
- More than half of all businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more to create a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media was their most time-consuming online activity.
(Businesses are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to focus their time on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited time, budget, and resources and many different business areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other important 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 Pinterest. These companies can make decisions that can significantly impact your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building content on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other websites.
Automating systems and process to save time is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since 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 business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited resources, marketing budget, and time. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels should you focus more budget, efforts, and your time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not own (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, 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 The Web Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that lets you automate the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should focus more of your time, budget, and efforts 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 recommend avoiding black hat tools, sites, techniques, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of services like Twitter, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t have to involve using black hat techniques!)
The focus of this series of articles is not to manipulate online services or flaunt their terms of service, but 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 sites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that most business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts advise. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of posting content to each different service, which can be extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to different services individually is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not use 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 once, and automate your content distribution to all other services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social channels 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 get all this done?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as shown in Part Two. Then, get it configured as shown in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then automate various processes using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at some WordPress plugins that can be used to:
- Distribute content to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically via RSS feeds to other sites
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, 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 useful features.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part 3 …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack – Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your posts automatically to several social accounts.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account options show in the post publishing area.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new content is automatically syndicated online.)
Jetpack provides an automated and hands-free way to get more exposure online for your content on social sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting function lets your site users engage with your site, post new comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature with third-party plugins that integrate with social media, helping to share and spread them online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can 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, social enticements for sharing content, ability to use keywords in the username, and SEO backlinks. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they enter their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can include below their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv can attract more comments and traffic and improve user engagement on your web site.)
For more details about using this great plugin, visit this site:
Social Link Machine
(Social Link Machine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a plugin for WordPress that allows you to drip-feed your content, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate content automatically to over 30 authority sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to over 30 social platforms, like:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Folkd, Kippt, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Rebel Mouse, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
To learn more about this plugin, go here: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get actionable information about your content marketing efforts), we have created a comprehensive article listing several social media monitoring tools and technologies that are worth knowing about. Go here for more info:
The above are just a few 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 Automation System: Content Sharing Phase – Summary
Once your website or blog and plugins have been fully set up and configured, all you have to do to start attracting web traffic is publish 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 content marketing here:
Once you have expertly 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 Automation System series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read more, click here:
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
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