Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part One of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to attract more web traffic is add web content consistently!)
In Part Two, we look at critical setup decisions. We explain the best way to get started 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 site is built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In Part 3, we discussed the configuration phase of the blueprint.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three we explain how to configure all the settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part 4, we discuss ways to automate traffic generation using various WordPress plugins.
Why Automating The Traffic Generation Makes Sense
Depending on which marketing expert you listen to, you could end up spending 1-2 hours every day (or more) posting content on social media in addition to trying to manage your business, your content and your online presence.
Many businesses lack the time, human resources and financial means to employ the services of a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts recommend. If you are spending all of your time posting updates on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter in addition to planning and writing content for your website or blog, how does anything in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their working hours 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 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 was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was conducted today, the numbers would probably 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 spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and budgets and many business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on a number of social websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. These sites can and will make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without consulting you. 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 virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other websites.
Investing in automation to leverage time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited resources, time, and marketing budgets. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels do you invest more of your budget, time, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you ultimately have little to no control over (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 The Web Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that allows you to automate the traffic generation with WordPress.
With this strategy, 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 channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more budget, time, and your efforts on,
- Invest most of your time and 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 urge you to avoid using black hat sites, techniques, solutions, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the terms of service and policies of services like Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not require using black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing here is not to game online services or bypass their terms of service, but 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 increase your exposure online to websites visited 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 small businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts advise. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of using this approach …
(Posting content to different marketing channels can be extremely 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 your content distribution to all other services.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social channels and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content 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 site as described in Part Two. Then, expertly configure your site settings as explained in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then automate the content distribution with plugins like the ones discussed in the section below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a number of plugins that can help:
- Distribute content to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content to other web properties via RSS feeds
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and more as soon as you publish new content using a WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with loads of useful features.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part 3 …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack – Publicize)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Publicize your content to various social networks.)
After all settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account options displays in the post publishing box.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it will be automatically syndicated online.)
For more details about the benefits of using this WordPress plugin, go here: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting feature that lets your blog readers interact with your site, post comments, reply to other users and engage with your content.
You can expand the WordPress built-in commenting feature using a 3rd-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content around.
For example, a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they plus1, like, or tweet your content. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included below their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv can attract more comments and improve user engagement on your website.)
To learn more about this plugin, visit the plugin website:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a plugin for WordPress that lets you automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to over 30 online platforms, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed your content to over 30 social platforms)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to over 30 authority platforms, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Instapaper, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about the benefits of using this plugin, visit this website: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get useful information about your content marketing campaigns), we have created a detailed article where we explore many social media measurement tools and technologies that will help you keep track of online trends, monitor competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that can affect your business, etc, see what online conversations are taking place that could affect your business,etc. More info:
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 Automation System: Automated Content Syndication Phase – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do is add fresh content consistently to start attracting web traffic organically.
If you need help coming up with unlimited great ideas for content that you can post on your web site, then subscribe to our FREE email training course on content marketing here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is addressed in the next article in our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Part 4
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
- Website Traffic Blueprint Part 5 – How To Get More Website Visitors For Your Business With WordPress
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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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