Welcome to Part Four of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to create an automated traffic generating machine using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part 1, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to bring more traffic is post fresh content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we focus on critical setup decisions. 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 website, and what to do if your existing website was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we look at the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 we show you how to configure all the settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, we look at ways to automate traffic generation with different WordPress plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate The Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which online marketing experts you listen to, you could end up trying to spend 1-2 hours or more per day promoting your business on social media, as well as managing your business, your content and your web presence.
Most small businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are recommending. If you spent hours checking Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook in addition to planning and writing content for your blog or website, how would anything in your business ever get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours simply keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: NFIB)
Many business owners spend most of their time simply keeping 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.
A study of small businesses done in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent around 6 hours per week on social media (most of the other businesses surveyed using 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 figures would most likely 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 consumed the most time online.
(Small businesses are spending more time marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend more 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 equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited time, marketing budget, and resources and many business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on various social websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. These companies can and will make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building content on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other sites.
Investing in business automation to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increasing availability of hundreds of new channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited resources, time, and marketing budgets. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you invest more budget, time, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring the benefits of building content on 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 strategy that allows you to automate your traffic generation with WordPress.
With this formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should invest more time, efforts, and budget on,
- Invest most of your time 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 strongly urge you to avoid using black hat techniques, solutions, websites, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the policies and terms of service of services like Facebook, YouTube, Google, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t need to involve using black hat techniques!)
The focus of this series of articles is not to manipulate online services or bypass their terms of service, but to show you how to be smart with your limited resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from websites 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 small businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts advise. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited resources, time, and budget.
So, instead of posting content to each service, which is extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to different services one at a time can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose this one 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 channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media sites and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content automatically to other blogs and online 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as shown in Part Two. Then, get it all configured as shown in Part 3. After all this is in place, you can then automate your 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-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a number of traffic-generating plugins that can help:
- Syndicate content to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content to other online properties via RSS
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, 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 many great features.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part 3 …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack – Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Publicize your content automatically to various social networks.)
After all settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account details in your Publish area.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they are automatically syndicated online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides a hands-free, automated way to get more exposure for your content online on social media websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress native commenting system allows your site users to engage with your site, post new comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature with a 3rd-party plugin that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can 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 website of the comment author while they are entering their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which they can choose to include below their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website.)
Go here to learn more about this great plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin that lets you syndicate content, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate your content to many traffic-generating websites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to over 30 traffic-generating sites, such as:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Linkagogo, Plurk, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
Visit this website to learn more about the benefits of using this handy plugin: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get useful information about your content marketing campaigns), we have created a comprehensive article where we explore over 30 social media tracking tools and technologies that will help you identify new trends and opportunities, track competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that could affect your business,etc. Visit this page to learn more:
The above are just some examples of the many content distribution plugins that WordPress makes available.
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: Content Syndication Process – Summary
Once your site and plugins have been fully set up and configured, all you then have to do to attract new web traffic is publish great content consistently.
We have created a complete email series designed to help you come up with unlimited content ideas for your website:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is covered in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Four
To keep reading about this topic, click here:
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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