Welcome to Part Four of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to create an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part 1, we describe the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is add fresh content consistently to automatically start generating more traffic!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase of the traffic automation system. We helped you understand the best way to get started 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 website was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In Part Three, we discussed important configuration decisions.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part 4, we discuss ways to automate your traffic with different plugins.
Why You Should Consider Automating The Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which experts you listen to, you could end up investing an hour or more each day posting content on social media, as well as trying to run your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Most business owners lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts recommend. If you were to spend half a day checking LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook in addition to writing articles for your website or blog, how would you get anything else in your business done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours just keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
Research done by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent around 6 hours each week on social media (the other half 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 most likely be even 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 the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited budget, resources, and time and many different areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social 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 StumbleUpon. These companies can and will make decisions that can significantly impact your business without prior warning. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can control your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other sites.
Automating business processes to leverage time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increasing availability of many new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited budgets, time, and resources. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels should you focus more efforts, budget, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring the benefits of building content on your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Web Traffic Generation With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that allows you to automate your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should focus more of your time, efforts, and 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 urge you to avoid using black hat websites, solutions, methods, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the terms of service and policies of companies like Facebook, Google, Pinterest, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t 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 so you can leverage your time and efforts, and increase your exposure online to sites 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, most small business owners lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts recommend. 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 services one by one is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not use this 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 marketing channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media channels and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress website as shown in Part 2. Then, configure your site settings as shown in Part Three. 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 Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a look now at some examples of traffic-generation WordPress plugins that can be used to:
- Syndicate content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically via RSS to other web properties
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn and more as soon as you publish your content using a plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many useful functions.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part Three …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Share your posts on several social media accounts.)
After configuring all of the account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details displayed in the post publishing section.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it is automatically distributed online.)
To learn more about the benefits of using this great plugin, visit this site: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress commenting system allows your blog readers to interact with your website or blog, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature using a 3rd-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread your content around.
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 plus1, like, or tweet your content. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included at the bottom of their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can help attract more comments and visitors and create more user engagement on your website.)
To learn more about this great plugin, go here:
Social LinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that allows you to syndicate your content to dozens of online sites, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate your content automatically to many social platforms)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to dozens of traffic-generating websites, including:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Folkd, Kippt, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about using this plugin, visit this site: Social LinkMachine
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), or if you want to learn more about social media monitoring tools that are worth checking out and knowing about, refer to this article:
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 Automation Blueprint: Automated Content Sharing Phase – Summary
Once you have your website or blog and plugins fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do to start attracting traffic is post fresh content consistently.
We have created a complete email training series designed to help you never run out of content for posting to your web site:
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 addressed in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Four
To continue reading, 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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