Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive visitors automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part One of this series, we provide an overview of the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is add fresh content on a consistent basis to automatically begin attracting new traffic!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase of the blueprint. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing website was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we look at important configuration decisions.
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 that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this article, we explain how to set up various plugins that can help get web traffic automatically to your website whenever you begin adding content on a regular basis.
Why Automating Your Traffic Generation Makes Sense
Depending on which marketing expert you get your advice from, you could end up trying to spend an hour a day (or more) posting content on social media while also running your business, creating content and managing your online presence.
Many business owners simply lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts recommend. If you spent all of your time posting updates on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook in addition to planning and writing content for your blog or website, how would anything in your business ever get done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small business owners spend their working hours. Infographic source: NFIB)
Small business owners spend most of their working hours trying to keep their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
Marketing research conducted in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent 6 or more hours per week on social media (the other half spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This usage of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was conducted today, the numbers would most likely be even higher.
- More than half of all small 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.
(Small businesses are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend more time marketing and promoting themselves online in order to compete and survive, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and marketing budgets and many 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 media sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. These sites can make decisions that can significantly affect your business without consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building content on someone else’s asset? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can control your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other websites.
Automating processes to leverage time is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increased availability of many new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited time, budgets, and resources. For example:
- Which of these channels should you invest 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, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
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 method for automating the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this formula, 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 online marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more of your budget, efforts, and time on,
- Invest most of your 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 recommend staying away from all black hat techniques, solutions, sites, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of services like Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t require using black hat methods!)
The purpose of this article series is to show you how to 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
We’ve just seen that most business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limited budget, time, and resources.
So, instead of posting content to different marketing channels individually, which is extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to different services individually is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose 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 your content distribution to all other services.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media sites and social 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 website or blog as described in Part Two. Then, get it all configured as shown in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you can then automate these processes with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at a few WordPress plugins that can:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically to other online properties via RSS
Jetpack by WordPress.com
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and more as soon as you publish your content using a WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with loads of useful functions.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part 3 …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
You can share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Publicize your posts automatically to several social media sites.)
After configuring all plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings displayed in your publishing section.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they will be automatically syndicated online.)
Jetpack provides you with a hands-free, automated way to get more exposure for your content online on social sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting function allows your blog readers to interact with your site, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions as part of an online community.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature with a 3rd-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates your comments with social media, helping to spread and share them online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they +1, like, or tweet your post. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they enter their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which can be included at the bottom of their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can help attract more comments and improve user engagement on your site.)
Go here to learn more about this handy plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that lets you automatically syndicate and drip-feed content, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate content automatically to over 30 traffic-generating sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to many social websites, including:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Delicious, Diigo, Kippt, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
Go here to learn more about the benefits of using this 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 detailed article where we explore several social media measurement tools and technologies that are worth checking out and knowing about. See this page for more details:
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 System: Automated Content Syndication Process – Summary
Once your site and plugins have been configured and set up, all you need to do is publish fresh content regularly to automatically start generating more web traffic.
We have created a complete email course aimed at helping you come up with unlimited content for posting to your site:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is covered in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read more, click on the link below:
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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