Welcome to Part Four of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive visitors automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part 1, we provide an overview of 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 blog, all you have to do is post new content regularly to automatically start generating more traffic!)
In Part Two, we look at critical setup decisions. We help you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing site is built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In Part Three, we look at the configuration phase of the traffic automation system.
In this step, we configure all the settings that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 we explain how to configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this step, we explain how to set up various plugins that can drive web traffic automatically to your site.
Why You Should Consider Automating The Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which marketing experts you listen to, you could end up investing an hour or more every day posting content on social media.
Most small businesses simply lack the time, resources and financial means to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are advising. If you are spending half your day posting updates on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter in addition to researching and writing articles for your website or blog, how will you get anything in your business done?
(Small businesses spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many businesses 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 stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
Marketing research conducted by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent around six 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 probably be 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.
(Businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend more time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budget, time, and resources and many areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These companies often will make decisions that can significantly affect your business without prior warning. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on someone else’s asset? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Investing in business automation to save time is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increasing availability of hundreds of new channels for promoting and marketing a business online creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited marketing budgets, time, and resources. For example:
- Which marketing channels should you invest more efforts, budget, and your time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not control (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic Generation With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that lets you automate the web traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more budget, efforts, and your time on,
- Invest most of your time and 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 strongly urge that you stay away from all black hat techniques, websites, solutions, and anything designed to “game” or violate the terms of service and policies of companies like Facebook, Pinterest, Google, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not have to involve the use of black hat methods!)
The purpose of this series of articles is to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites frequented by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen in the previous section that many business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means 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 time, budget, and resources.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to individual marketing channels is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not use this time-saving method 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 services.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social channels and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) automatically to other blogs and web 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress site as explained in Part Two. Then, get it configured as described in Part 3. After all this is in place, you then automate these processes using plugins such as the ones shown 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 Generation Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some traffic-generating WordPress plugins that can be used to:
- Post content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically to other online properties via RSS feeds
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
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 loads of great features.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (set up in Part Three.) …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack – Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts automatically on several social media sites.)
After all plugin and account settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings displays in your post publishing box.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically get shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they will be automatically shared online.)
This is an automated and hands-free way to get more exposure online for your content on social sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress commenting system lets your blog readers engage with your site, post new comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature using 3rd-party commenting plugins that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share your content around.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can create more user engagement on your website. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like adding twitter usernames to comments, SEO backlinks, ability to use keywords in the user name, and social enticements for content sharing. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which they can choose to include with their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your web site.)
Visit this website to learn more about the benefits of using this plugin:
Social Link Machine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a plugin for WordPress that lets you automatically drip-feed content to over 30 authority websites, build backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – drip-feed your content to over 30 online sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to many traffic-generating websites, like:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Folkd, Kippt, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
Go here to learn more about using this plugin: 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 written a comprehensive article listing many social media measurement tools that you may want to check out. Visit this page to learn more:
The above are just some examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating and sharing 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 System: Automated Content Distribution Phase – Summary
Once you have your website or blog and plugins fully set up and configured, all you need to do is add great content regularly to begin bringing web traffic organically.
We have created an entire email course aimed at helping you never run out of content for posting to your website or blog:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as can be improved. This step is addressed in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read more, click on the link below:
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