Welcome to Part Four of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part One, we 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 is add web content on a consistent basis to begin attracting new traffic!)
In Part Two, we discuss 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 website, and what to do if your existing site is built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we focus on the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure all the settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, we discuss ways to automate traffic to your website using various WordPress plugins.
Why Automating The Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on which online marketing expert you talk to, you could end up investing an hour or two every day (or more) posting content on social media.
Most businesses simply lack the time, 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 are prescribing. If you are spending most of your time posting updates on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook in addition to planning and writing content for your blog or website, how will you get anything else in your business done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small business owners spend their time. Infographic: NFIB)
Small businesses spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses done by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent around six hours each 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 was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was conducted today, the figures would probably be even 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 spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing 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, budgets, and time and many different areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social media sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or StumbleUpon. These sites can make decisions that affect 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 distribute your content automatically to other online accounts.
Automating systems and process to leverage time is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increasing availability of so many new channels for marketing and promoting a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited resources, time, and marketing budgets. For example:
- Which channels do you focus 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. YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula for automating your traffic-getting 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 costs,
- Determine which channels you should invest more of your time, budget, 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 recommend staying away from all black hat sites, strategies, solutions, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the terms of service and policies of sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t require the use of black hat methods!)
The purpose of this article is 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 sites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that many small business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to individual channels is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not use this time-saving strategy 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 once, and automate your content distribution to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media channels and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) 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 site as described in Part Two. Then, expertly configure everything as shown in Part 3. After all this is in place, you then automate the process using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at a few WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Distribute content to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content via RSS feeds to other websites
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
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 loads of great functions.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack – Publicize feature)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts on various social accounts.)
After all of the plugin and account settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account details displayed in your publishing box.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they are automatically shared online.)
Visit the plugin site to learn more about this plugin: Jetpack WordPress Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting feature lets your blog readers interact with your website, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature using a number of third-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share your content around.
For example, a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your web site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like ability to use keywords in the name, backlinks, adding twitter names to comments, and social enticements for content sharing. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they are typing their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which can be included with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website or blog.)
Visit the plugin website to learn more about using this great plugin:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that allows you to automatically syndicate content to dozens of traffic-generating websites, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed your content automatically to over 30 online platforms)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to many traffic-generating websites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Folkd, Kippt, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Overblog, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
Go here to learn more about the benefits of using this handy plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get useful information about your content distribution campaigns), go here for a detailed article about social media measurement tools and technologies that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns:
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 Process – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site and plugins set up and configured, all you have to do then is post web content on a regular basis to automatically drive traffic organically.
If you need great content ideas for your web site, we recommend subscribing to our FREE email training series 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 article in the series.
This is the end of Section Four
To continue reading this article, click on the link below:
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