Welcome to Part Four of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to turn a website into an automated traffic generation machine using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part 1, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to start driving web traffic is add web content regularly!)
In Part 2, we looked at critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your website was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we discuss important configuration decisions.
Here, we configure all the settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three we explain how to configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, we look at ways to automate traffic to your website with different plugins.
Why You Should Consider Automating The Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which marketing gurus you get your advice from, you could find yourself investing 1-2 hours every day (or more) promoting your business on social media, as well as running your business, creating content and managing your online presence.
Many small businesses simply lack the time, resources and budget to employ the services of a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise. If you spent hours checking LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook in addition to planning and writing articles for your blog or website, how would you get anything in your business done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small businesses spend their working hours. Infographic: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small 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 remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
Marketing research conducted in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent around six hours per week on social media (the other half 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 significantly 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 was their most time-consuming online activity.
(Businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend more time marketing and promoting themselves online in order to compete and survive, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other equally important areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budgets, time, and resources and many business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on various social media sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. These companies often will make decisions that can significantly impact your business without prior warning. Why invest so much effort and time building content on someone else’s asset? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other sites.
Investing in business automation to leverage time is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited resources, time, and budget. For example:
- Which channels should you invest more of your budget, efforts, and your time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring the benefits of building content on your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating The Web Traffic Generation With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula for automating the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, 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 invest more time, efforts, and your 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 strongly recommend avoiding black hat strategies, software, sites, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not have to involve using black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this article is not to game web services or break their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and increase your exposure online to 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 many experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited resources, time, and budget.
So, instead of posting content to different marketing channels, which is extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels one at a time can be very time-consuming!)
Why not use this time-saving method 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 the distribution of your content to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media sites and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as described in Part Two. Then, configure it as described in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then automate the process with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic System – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a number of traffic-generating WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Post content to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically via RSS to other online properties
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus 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 many useful features.
After Jetpack has been installed, 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)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts on several social media networks.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details in your Publish section.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they will be automatically shared online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides you with a hands-free, automated way to create more exposure for your content online on social websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting function lets your blog readers interact with your website, post new comments, reply to other users and engage with your content.
You can expand the WordPress built-in commenting feature using a number of third-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to share and spread your content around.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they like, tweet, or plus1 your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they are typing their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which can be included at the bottom of their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv can attract more comments and create more user engagement on your website.)
Go here to learn more about the benefits of this plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – Content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that allows you to automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to over 30 online websites, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate your content to dozens of traffic-generating platforms)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to dozens of online sites, including:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Linkagogo, Kippt, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Rebel Mouse, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
To learn more about this handy plugin, go here: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get actionable information about your content distribution campaigns), we have written a detailed article about social media tracking tools and technologies that will help you identify new business opportunities, track competitor activity, see what online conversations are taking place that can affect your business,etc. Go here to learn more about this:
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 Automation Blueprint: Automated Content Distribution Phase – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been configured and set up, all you have to do to attract more traffic is post great content regularly.
If you need endless content ideas for your website, 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 you can. This step is covered in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read the rest of this article, click here:
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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