Welcome to Part Four of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to create an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part One of this article series, 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 website or blog, all you have to do is add new content consistently to automatically bring traffic!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase. We helped 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 website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we focus on the configuration phase of the automation blueprint.
In this step, we configure all the settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you will configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this section of the series, we explain how to set up various WordPress plugins that can help bring visitors automatically to your site when you begin to publish fresh content.
Why Automating The Traffic Generation Makes Sense
Depending on who you get your advice from, you could end up trying to spend a couple of hours or more each day posting content on social media.
Most small businesses simply lack the time, human resources and financial means to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts recommend. If you spent half a day checking Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in addition to writing articles 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 business owners spend their time. Image source: NFIB)
Small businesses spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
Marketing research done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent at least 6 hours each week on social media (the other half of businesses surveyed that used 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 significantly 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. Source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend more time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to focus their time on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and marketing budget and many different areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on a number of social media websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. These companies can and will make decisions that affect your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much time and effort building content on someone else’s asset? With WordPress, you can control your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Automating processes to leverage time is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the availability of so many new channels for promoting and marketing a business creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited budget, time, and resources. For example:
- Which channels should you invest more efforts, time, and budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula for automating your traffic generation 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 channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more 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 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 urge you to avoid using black hat tools, sites, techniques, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of companies like Facebook, Pinterest, Google, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not require using black hat methods!)
The focus of this article is to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen in the previous section how many businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to different marketing channels can be very time-consuming!)
Why not choose 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 the distribution of your content to all other services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress site as explained in Part 2. Then, get it all configured as explained in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you can then automate the content distribution with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic System – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some plugins that can be used to:
- Post content to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content to other websites via RSS
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, 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 loads of useful functions.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Distribute your posts to several social media sites.)
After all of the settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details show in the publishing box.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they will be automatically shared online.)
To learn more about the benefits of using this WordPress plugin, go here: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress built-in commenting function lets your site users engage with your website, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature using a number of third-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments 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 site more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they like, tweet, or +1 your post. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they enter their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can include below their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can attract more comments and web traffic and create more user engagement on your site.)
Visit this site to learn more about this plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin that allows you to syndicate content to over 30 online websites, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate content automatically to many social websites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to dozens of authority platforms, like:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Folkd, Kippt, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
For more information about the benefits of this powerful plugin, go here: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get actionable information about your content distribution campaigns), go here for a detailed article about social media tracking tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives:
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 System: Content Distribution Phase – Summary
Once you have your website or blog and plugins configured and set up, all you then need to do is post fresh content regularly to start attracting traffic organically.
If you need help coming up with unlimited ideas for content that you can post on your web site, then subscribe to our FREE email training series on growing your business with content marketing here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is explained in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Section 4
To continue reading, click on the link below:
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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