Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part One of this series, we provide an overview of the traffic automation process, and explain 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 bring traffic is add fresh content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, 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 site is built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we focus on configuring WordPress.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this section of the series, we explain how to set up various plugins that can drive traffic automatically to your website or blog.
Why Automating The Traffic Generation Makes Sense
Depending on who you get your advice from, you could end up spending an hour every day (or more) posting content on social media.
Most business owners lack the time, 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 hours posting updates on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter in addition to planning and writing articles for your website or blog, how could you get anything else in your business done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many business owners spend most of their time trying to keep their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent around six hours each week on social media (the rest 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 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 consumed the most time online.
(Businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend more time marketing and promoting themselves online 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, marketing budgets, and time and many different areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. These sites can and will make decisions that can significantly impact your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other online accounts.
Automating processes to save time is not new. Businesses of all sizes 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, marketing budget, and resources. For example:
- Which channels do you focus more efforts, budget, and your time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote 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 formula for automating the traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should focus more of your time, efforts, and budget on,
- Invest most of your time and efforts building your own asset instead of someone else’s 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 techniques, tools, websites, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of companies like Pinterest, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t have to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this article is to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that most small businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of posting content to each different channel, which can be very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose this time-saving approach 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 social 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your site as shown in Part 2. Then, get everything configured as shown in Part Three. After all this is in place, you can then connect all of the dots with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic System – Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a few plugins that can help:
- Post content to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content to other websites via RSS feeds
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus 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 features.
After Jetpack has been installed, 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 the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
Configure this section to share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts automatically on several social media networks.)
After configuring all plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details show in your publishing section.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it will be automatically syndicated online.)
Go here to learn more about the benefits of using this plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting feature that lets your blog readers engage with your website, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions as part of a social community.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature using a 3rd-party plugin that integrates your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them online.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they tweet, like, or +1 your post. This plugin will visit the website 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 the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can attract more comments and create more user engagement on your website or blog.)
To learn more about this handy plugin, go here:
SocialLinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a plugin that allows you to automatically syndicate your content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate your content to dozens of authority platforms)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to dozens of authority sites, such as:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Delicious, Linkagogo, Plurk, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, visit the plugin site: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get actionable information about your content marketing efforts), we have written a detailed article on social media measurement tools and technologies that will help you identify new trends and opportunities, track competitor activity, see what online conversations are taking place that can affect your business,etc. To learn more, go here:
The above are just a few 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 System: Content Syndication Phase – Summary
Once your website and plugins have been set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then to begin bringing more web traffic is publish great content regularly.
We have created a complete email course designed to help you come up with endless content ideas for posting to your website or blog:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is covered in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Part Four
To keep reading this article, 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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