Welcome to Part Four of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to create an automated web traffic generating machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part One of this series, we describe the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to automatically drive traffic is publish great content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we discuss the setup phase of this system. 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 website was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In Part 3, we looked at the configuration phase.
Here, we configure all the settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 we show you how to configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part 4, you will learn how to set up various WordPress plugins that can help bring new visitors automatically to your website.
Why You Should Consider Automating The Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which marketing experts you listen to, you could find yourself investing a couple of hours or more every day promoting your business on social media.
Many businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts prescribe. If you spend half your day checking Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook in addition to researching and writing articles for your website or blog, how does anything in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours simply keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: NFIB)
Many businesses 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 stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
Research conducted by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent at least 6 hours each week on social media (the other half of businesses surveyed using 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 most likely be higher.
- More than half of all 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 each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse)
As 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 areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budgets, time, and resources and many different areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These sites can and will make decisions that affect your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much time and effort building content on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and distribute 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 since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the availability of hundreds of new channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited resources, budgets, and time. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you invest more of your budget, efforts, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring 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 Web Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that allows you to automate your traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should focus more of your time, budget, and your efforts on,
- Invest most of your efforts 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 recommend avoiding black hat methods, websites, software, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the policies and terms of service of companies like Facebook, Google, Pinterest, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t need to involve using black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this series of articles is to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and increase your exposure online to sites frequented by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, many small businesses lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts advise. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited time, budget, and resources.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to different services one by one can be very time-consuming!)
Why not opt for a smarter, time-saving approach like the one shown below 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 your content distribution to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media channels and social 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 website or blog as explained in Part Two. Then, configure things as explained in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then automate these processes using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at a number of traffic-generating WordPress plugins that can:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically via RSS feeds to other websites
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+ 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 many useful features.
After installing Jetpack, 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 share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Share your posts on various social networks.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings displayed in your publishing area.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they will be automatically shared online.)
To learn more about this handy plugin, visit the plugin website: Jetpack by WordPress.com
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting feature lets your visitors engage with your site, post new comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature with a third-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates your comments with social media, helping to spread and share them online.
For example, a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your website or blog. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like social enticements for sharing content, the ability to add twitter usernames to comments, search-indexable backlinks, using keywords in the user name. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they are entering their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included with their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can attract more comments and create more user engagement on your website or blog.)
To learn more about this great plugin, visit this site:
SocialLinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin that allows you to drip-feed your content to over 30 social platforms, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate and drip-feed your content automatically to over 30 online platforms)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to over 30 social platforms, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Diigo, Instapaper, Zotero, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Blogger, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
Go here to learn more about this 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 written a detailed article listing a number of social media monitoring tools and technologies that you may want to check out. See this page to learn more:
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: Content Syndication Stage – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site and plugins set up and expertly configured, all you need to do is post fresh content on a regular basis to automatically bring web traffic organically.
We have created a complete email course designed to help you come up with endless content for your site:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is addressed in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Section 4
To continue reading, 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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