Welcome to Part 4 of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a site into an automated traffic generating machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part One, we describe the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to automatically generate more traffic is post web content regularly!)
In Part 2, we focus on the setup phase of the blueprint. We explain the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your website is built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In Part 3, we look at important configuration decisions.
Here, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure all the settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, we will discuss ways to automate the traffic system using various WordPress plugins.
Why You Should Consider Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which marketing gurus you talk to, you could end up trying to spend 1-2 hours every day (or more) promoting your business on social media.
Most business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to employ the services of a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts recommend doing. If you are spending hours posting updates on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook in addition to writing content for your website or blog, how does anything in your business get done?
(Keeping a business running is how most small businesses spend their time. Infographic: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their working hours just keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent 6 or more hours each week on social media (the rest 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 research was conducted today, the numbers would probably 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.
(Businesses are spending more time marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to focus their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and marketing budget and many different business 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 promoting and marketing your business on various social websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. These sites often will make decisions that impact your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much time and effort building content on someone else’s asset? With WordPress, you can control your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other sites.
Investing in automation to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever 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, especially for those with limited time, resources, and budgets. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels do you focus more budget, efforts, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not control (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on 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-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula for automating your traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should focus more budget, time, and your efforts 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 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 sites, techniques, solutions, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the terms of service and policies of services like Pinterest, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not require using black hat techniques!)
The focus of this series of articles is to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing 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
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, many businesses lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited time, budget, and resources.
So, instead of using this approach …
(Posting content to services one at a time can be very 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:
- Automatically distribute content to social sites 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress website as described in Part 2. Then, get everything configured as shown in Part 3. After all this is in place, you 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 Web Traffic Automation System – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a number of plugins that can help to:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content via RSS to other sites
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+ and more as soon as you publish your content using a WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with loads of useful features.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to 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)
You can share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your content automatically on various social sites.)
After configuring all of the account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize options appear in your post publishing section.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically get shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new content is automatically syndicated online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides you with an automated and hands-free way to create more exposure online for your content on social media sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting function that allows your visitors to engage with your web site, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions as part of an online community.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature using a 3rd-party commenting plugin that integrates with social media, helping to spread and share your content online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can improve user engagement on your website or blog. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like search-indexable backlinks, social enticements for content-sharing, using keywords in the name, and the ability to add twitter names to comments. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they enter their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which they can include below their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website or blog.)
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, go here:
Social LinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a plugin for WordPress that lets you syndicate and drip-feed content to dozens of authority websites, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed your content automatically to over 30 authority websites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to many online websites, including:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Instapaper, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blogger, Overblog, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
Go here for more information about the benefits of this 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 distribution campaigns), or to learn more about social media tracking tools and technologies that you may want to check out, refer to this article:
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 Automation System: Automated Content Syndication Stage – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do is add content regularly to begin attracting new web traffic organically.
If you need endless ideas for content that you can post on your website or blog, we recommend subscribing to our FREE email training course on content marketing here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as can be improved. This step is addressed in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read the rest of 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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