Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to drive traffic automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part One, 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 site, all you have to do to automatically start driving traffic is add fresh content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we looked at critical setup decisions. We explained 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 website was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In Part 3, we discuss the configuration phase of the automation blueprint.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, we explain how to set up various plugins that can drive traffic automatically to your site as you begin posting content.
Why Automate The Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on who you get your advice from, you could find yourself investing 1-2 hours every day (or more) promoting your business on social media.
Most business owners 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 recommend. If you spend half your day posting updates on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing content for your blog or website, how does anything else in your business get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their working hours just keeping their businesses up and running. Source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their working hours just keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and make sales in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent 6 or more hours each week on social media (most of the other businesses surveyed using social media 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 survey was done today, the numbers would probably be higher.
- More than half of all businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more creating a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media consumed the most time online.
(Small businesses are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time promoting and marketing themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to prioritize their time on other equally important areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, marketing budget, and time and many different areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These sites often will make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building content on someone else’s asset? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own real estate and post your content automatically to other online properties.
Automating systems and process to leverage time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the availability of many new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited time, resources, and marketing budget. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you focus more budget, efforts, and your time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you ultimately have little to no control over (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Web Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that lets you automate your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content 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 of your time, budget, and your efforts 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 strongly recommend staying away from all black hat sites, tools, techniques, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of sites like LinkedIn, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not need to involve using black hat techniques!)
The focus of this article is not to game web services or bypass their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and marketing efforts, and increase your exposure online to sites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, most businesses lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to individual marketing channels is very time-consuming!)
Why not do 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 once, and automate the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social services 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as explained in Part 2. Then, expertly configure things as shown in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you can then automate the process using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a look now at some traffic-generating plugins that can help to:
- Syndicate content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically to other websites via RSS feeds
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn 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 features.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part 3 …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Distribute your posts to various social media sites.)
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 account details displayed in the post publishing section.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically be shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your posts are automatically distributed online.)
Visit the plugin site for more details about this plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress native commenting system lets your blog readers engage with your site, post new comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions as part of a community.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature using a third-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates with social media, helping to spread and share your content online.
For example, a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your website. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like backlinks, the ability to add twitter names to comments, social enticements for sharing your content, and using keywords in the username. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can include at the bottom of their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv can attract more comments and visitors and improve user engagement on your website.)
To learn more about this great plugin, go here:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a WordPress plugin that lets you drip-feed your content to many social platforms, build backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate content to many online sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to over 30 online sites, including:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Folkd, Instapaper, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about using this powerful plugin, go here: 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 distribution efforts), we have written a comprehensive article on social media tracking tools and technologies that you may want to check out. Go here to learn more:
The above are just some 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 Syndication Process – Summary
Once your website and plugins have been fully set up and configured, all you have to do to automatically start generating new web traffic is add content on a regular basis.
If you need help coming up with endless topics for posting content on your site, we recommend subscribing to our FREE email training series here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is explained in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read the rest of this article, click here:
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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