Welcome to Part Four of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a site into an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part 1 of this series, we provided an overview of the traffic automation process, and 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 is post fresh content consistently to attract traffic!)
In Part 2, we look at the setup phase. We help you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing website is built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we discuss important configuration decisions.
In this step, we configure all the settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part 4, we will show you how to set up various plugins that can get traffic automatically to your website just by adding web content.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate The Traffic Generation Process
Depending on who you listen to, you could find yourself investing an hour or two (or more) per day promoting your business on social media.
Most small business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to employ the services of a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts recommend doing. If you were to spend half a day checking Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook in addition to researching and writing content for your blog or website, how could you get anything in your business 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 working hours trying to keep their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay 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 per week on social media (the rest 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 done today, the figures would probably 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 the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to prioritize their time on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited budget, time, and resources and many different business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on a number of social websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. These companies can make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without prior notification. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on someone else’s asset? With WordPress, you can control your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other online accounts.
Automating systems and process to save time is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the availability of many new channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited time, marketing budgets, and resources. For example:
- Which channels should you invest more of your efforts, budget, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that allows you to automate the web traffic generation process 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 costs,
- Determine which channels you should invest more of your efforts, budget, and your time on,
- Invest most of your time 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 websites, solutions, techniques, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of sites like YouTube, Facebook, Google.
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t have to involve using black hat methods!)
The focus of this series of articles is to show you how to be smart with your limited resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and increase your exposure online to sites used 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 businesses lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, time, and resources.
So, instead of choosing this approach …
(Posting content to different marketing channels can be very time-consuming!)
Why not opt for 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 once, and automate your content distribution to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social sites and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content to other blogs and online 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 site as shown in Part Two. Then, get everything configured as explained in Part Three. Once all of 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 Traffic System – Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some WordPress plugins that can:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content via RSS to other sites
Jetpack by WordPress.com
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus 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 Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part Three …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
Configure this section to share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your content to several social media networks.)
After all of the plugin and account settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details displays in your post publishing area.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new posts will be automatically shared online.)
Go here to learn more about this great plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting system allows your visitors to interact with your site, post comments, reply to other users and engage with your content.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature using a third-party commenting plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates with social media, helping to spread and share your content online.
For example, 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 rewards like backlinks, social enticements for content sharing, adding twitter handles to comments, and ability to use keywords in the name. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they are typing their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can choose to include with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website or blog.)
Go here to learn more about this plugin:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a plugin that allows you to automatically syndicate and drip-feed content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate content to many authority sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to many authority platforms, like:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Instapaper, Zotero, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Overblog, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
Go here to learn more about this handy plugin: SocialLinkMachine
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 written a comprehensive article listing many social media measurement tools that you may want to check out. Go here for more info:
The above are just a few examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating and syndicating 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 Blueprint: Automated Content Syndication Process – Summary
Once you have your site and plugins expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do to start generating more traffic is add content on a consistent basis.
If you need great topics for posting content on your web site, then subscribe to our email training series here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is covered in the next section of the WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read more, click on the link below:
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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