Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to automate traffic to your site using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is publish new content regularly to automatically attract web traffic!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part 3, we discuss configuring WordPress.
In this step, we configure all the settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you will configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, we will show you how to set up various plugins that can help bring visitors automatically to your website or blog.
Why Automate The Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which business marketing experts you listen to, you could find yourself investing 1-2 hours or more per day promoting your business on social media.
Most small businesses lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are prescribing. If you were to spend hours posting updates on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn in addition to writing content for your website or blog, how would anything else in your business ever get done?
(Keeping their business up and running is how most small businesses spend their time. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many businesses spend most of their working hours just keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
Marketing research done by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent around six hours per 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 was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was done today, the figures 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 their most time-consuming online activity.
(Small businesses are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend more 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 resources, time, and budgets and many business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on various social websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. These companies often will make decisions that can significantly affect your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much effort and time building content on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can have complete control of your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other online properties.
Automating systems and process to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increasing availability of so many new channels for marketing and promoting a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited resources, time, and marketing budget. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels do you focus more budget, efforts, and time 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 neglecting your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic Generation With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that allows you to automate the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should invest more of your efforts, budget, and time 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 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 methods, websites, solutions, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of services like YouTube, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t require using black hat methods!)
What we are focusing here is to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to 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
We’ve just seen that most small businesses lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited resources, time, and budget.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to services one at a time is very time-consuming!)
Why not use this 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 sites and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content to other blogs and online 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 site as explained in Part 2. Then, get it configured as shown in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you can then connect all of the dots with plugins such as the ones discussed in the section below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a number of WordPress plugins that can help:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically via RSS to other online properties
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, GooglePlus 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 great features.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to your 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)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts on various social networks.)
After all of the settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings displays in the Publish area.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they will be automatically distributed online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides you with a hands-free, automated way to create more exposure online for your content on social websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting feature that lets your blog readers engage with your website or blog, post comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions as part of a social community.
You can expand the WordPress built-in commenting feature using 3rd-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content online.
For example, a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help attract more comments and improve user engagement on your site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like social enticements for content-sharing, using keywords in the username, SEO backlinks, and the ability to add twitter names to comments. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they are entering 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 encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your site.)
Go here to learn more about the benefits of using this plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a plugin that lets you automatically drip-feed your content, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed content automatically to many online websites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to over 30 traffic-generating sites, like:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Instapaper, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
Visit this site to learn more about the benefits of using this great plugin: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get useful information about your content distribution efforts), we have written a comprehensive article about social media monitoring tools and technologies that you may want to check out. To learn more, go here:
The above are just a few examples of the many content distribution plugins that WordPress makes available.
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: Content Sharing Process – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been fully set up and configured, all you need to do then to attract traffic is add web content on a regular basis.
We have created an entire email training series aimed at helping you come up with endless content for posting to your site:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is explained in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Part 4
To keep reading, click on the link below:
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