Welcome to Part Four of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to drive traffic automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part One of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to begin attracting more traffic is publish new content regularly!)
In Part 2, we focused on critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we focused on important configuration decisions.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three we explain how to configure all the settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, we discuss ways to automate traffic generation using a number of WordPress plugins.
Why Automate The Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on which experts you talk to, you could end up spending 1-2 hours per day (or more) posting content on social media while also running your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Many small business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise. If you are spending hours checking LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter in addition to writing content for your website or blog, how will you get anything else in your business done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time just keeping their businesses up and running. Source: NFIB)
Small businesses 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 done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all small 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 usage of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was done today, the numbers would most likely be significantly 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 was the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of 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 equally important areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and marketing budget and many areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social media websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or StumbleUpon. These companies can and will make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can control your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Investing in automation to save time is not new. Businesses have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increasing availability of hundreds of new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited marketing budgets, resources, and time. For example:
- Which channels should you focus more efforts, budget, and your time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you ultimately have no control over (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that allows you to automate your traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more budget, time, and your efforts 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 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 websites, software, methods, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of services like Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t need to involve using black hat methods!)
The purpose of this series of articles is to show you how to be smart with your limited resources and automate your content distribution in order to 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, most small business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of using this approach …
(Posting content to different marketing channels one by one can be very time-consuming!)
Why not do this 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 services.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media services and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) automatically 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as shown in Part 2. Then, configure everything as shown in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you can then automate the content distribution using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic System – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a look now at some examples of traffic-generation plugins that can be used to:
- Post content to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content to other web properties via RSS feeds
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn and more as soon as you publish new content using a WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many useful features.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Distribute your content to various social accounts.)
After all 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 options displayed in the publishing section.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new content is automatically shared online.)
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, go here: Jetpack by WordPress.com
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting feature lets your visitors interact with your website or blog, post comments, reply to other users and engage with your content.
You can expand the WordPress built-in commenting feature using third-party plugins that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they +1, tweet, or like your content. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which can be included at the bottom of their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your site.)
To learn more about this handy plugin, go here:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that allows you to automatically drip-feed content to over 30 social sites, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate content to dozens of online sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to many online websites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Delicious, Linkagogo, Plurk, Reddit, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
To learn more about the benefits of 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 campaigns), we have written a detailed article about social media monitoring tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives here:
The above are just a few examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating and sharing the distribution of your content online.
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 Sharing Process – Summary
Once you have your site and plugins fully set up and expertly configured, all you then need to do to automatically bring web traffic is post new content regularly.
If you need help coming up with unlimited great ideas for posting content on your web site, then subscribe to our email training series here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as can be improved. This step is covered in the next article in our WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read the rest of this article series, click on the link below:
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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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