Welcome to Part Four of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to turn your site into an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part 1, we provided an overview of the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to automatically start generating more web traffic is publish fresh content on a regular basis!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In Part Three, we look at configuring WordPress.
Here, we configure all the settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 you will configure all the settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section of the series, we discuss ways to automate traffic to your website using various plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate The Traffic Generation
Depending on which business marketing guru you get your advice from, you could find yourself investing an hour or two (or more) per day posting content on social media, as well as running your business, creating content and managing your online presence.
Many business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are advising. If you spent half a day posting updates on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn in addition to planning and writing content for your blog or website, how would anything else in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. Source: NFIB)
Small businesses spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
Marketing research done by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent 6 or more hours each 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 research 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 consumed the most time online.
(Small businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to prioritize their time on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, budgets, and time and many business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. These sites often will make decisions that impact your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on someone else’s real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own real estate and post your content automatically to other websites.
Automating processes to save time is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited time, resources, and marketing budget. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you focus more efforts, budget, and your time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not own (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, 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 The Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method for automating your 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 web marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should focus more budget, time, and your efforts on,
- Invest most of your efforts building your own asset 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 avoiding black hat software, sites, techniques, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of sites like Google, Pinterest, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not require using black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this article series is to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and 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, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to individual channels can be 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 one-time, and automate the distribution of your content to all other marketing channels.
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
- Import content automatically (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, expertly configure everything as described in Part 3. After all this is in place, you can then connect all of the dots using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some plugins that can be used to:
- Distribute content to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically to other websites via RSS
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, 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 the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Share your content 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 account details appear in the publishing area.)
Now, as soon as 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.)
To learn more about using this plugin, visit this site: Jetpack WordPress Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting function that lets your site users interact with your web site, post comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature with 3rd-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, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your web site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like ability to use keywords in the user name, SEO backlinks, adding twitter names to comments, and social enticements for sharing content. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they are typing their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which they can include below their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your web site.)
Visit the plugin site to learn more about this plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that allows you to automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to many traffic-generating sites, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – drip-feed your content automatically to many traffic-generating websites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to many traffic-generating platforms, such as:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Folkd, Instapaper, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Sett, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
To learn more about the benefits of using this plugin, go here: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get useful information about your content marketing campaigns), we have created a comprehensive article listing a number of social media tracking tools and technologies that are worth knowing about. For more details, go here:
The above are just a few examples of the many content distribution plugins that are available to WordPress users.
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 Sharing Stage – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been configured and set up, all you need to do to automatically begin attracting web traffic is publish web content on a regular basis.
If you need great topics for posting content on your website or blog, then subscribe to our email training series here:
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 WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Part 4
To continue reading, click here:
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