Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part One of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is add great content on a consistent basis to automatically start generating traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to start 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 website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we focused on the configuration phase of this blueprint.
Here, we configure all the settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 you will configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section of the article series, we will show you how to set up various plugins that can help drive new visitors automatically to your site as you begin adding fresh content on a regular basis.
Why You Should Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which marketing expert you get your advice from, you could find yourself trying to spend a couple of hours or more per day promoting your business on social media while also trying to run your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Most small businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise doing. If you spent all of your time checking Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in addition to planning and writing content for your website or blog, how would anything in your business get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their time just keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: NFIB)
Many businesses spend most of their working hours trying to keep their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and make sales in order to survive.
A study of small businesses done by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent at least six hours each week on social media (most of the other 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 research was done today, the figures 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.
(Businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend more time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to prioritize their time on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budget, time, and resources and many different 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 various social media sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. These sites often will make decisions that can significantly impact your business without prior warning. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own real estate and post your content automatically to other online accounts.
Automating business systems and processes 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 availability of so many new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited resources, marketing budget, and time. For example:
- Which of these channels should you invest more of your budget, efforts, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that do not belong to you (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic Generation With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that lets you automate your traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should invest more of your efforts, budget, and your time on,
- Invest most of your time 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 recommend staying away from all black hat websites, techniques, solutions, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of companies like Facebook, Google, Pinterest, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not require the use of black hat methods!)
What we are focusing here is not to manipulate online services or break their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and efforts, and increase your exposure online to websites 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 that many businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited time, budget, and resources.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different channels can be very time-consuming!)
Why not choose this 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 once, and automate your content distribution to all other services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social channels and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content automatically 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 website or blog as described in Part Two. Then, get it configured as shown in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then automate your content distribution using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a few WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Distribute content to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content to other blogs via RSS
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, GooglePlus and more as soon as you publish new content using a plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many useful functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part 3 …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your content on several social accounts.)
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 displayed in the publishing section.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new posts are automatically syndicated online.)
Jetpack provides you with a hands-free way to get more exposure online for your content on social media sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting system allows your visitors to interact with your website or blog, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature with 3rd-party commenting plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to share and spread your content online.
For example, a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website or blog. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like backlinks, adding twitter usernames to comments, using keywords in the username, and social enticements for sharing your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they type their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which can be included with their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your web site.)
For more details about the benefits of using this WordPress plugin, visit this website:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – Content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a plugin for WordPress that allows you to drip-feed your content, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate your content automatically to over 30 social sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to many traffic-generating platforms, including:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Instapaper, Reddit, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
Visit this site to learn more about this powerful plugin: 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 written a detailed article on social media tracking tools that are worth checking out and knowing about. Go here to learn more about this:
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 Blueprint: Automated Content Distribution Stage – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site and plugins set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then to begin bringing new web traffic is add new content on a consistent basis.
If you need topics for posting content on your site, then subscribe to our FREE email training course on content marketing here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is covered in the next article in our WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read more, click here:
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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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