Welcome to Part Four of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to drive new visitors automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part One of this series, we provide an overview of the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is post web content regularly to attract more traffic!)
In Part Two, we looked at critical setup decisions. We helped 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 site was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we discussed configuring the system.
Here, we configure hosting settings, WordPress 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 can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this article, we discuss ways to automate the traffic-generation process with WordPress plugins.
Why Automating The Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on which experts you talk to, you could find yourself spending an hour or two (or more) every day promoting your business on social media, as well as trying to run your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Most businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts recommend. If you spent hours posting updates on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter in addition to researching and writing articles for your website or blog, how would anything else in your business get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
Marketing research conducted by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent at least six hours per 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 use of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was conducted today, the numbers would probably be higher.
- More than half of all small businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more to create a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media was their most time-consuming online activity.
(Small businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend more time promoting and marketing themselves online in order to compete and survive, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and marketing budget and many different areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social 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 often will make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without prior warning. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on someone else’s asset? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other sites.
Automating processes to leverage time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increasing availability of hundreds of new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited resources, budgets, and time. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you invest more of your time, budget, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not own (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, 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 share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that lets you automate your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more of your efforts, budget, and time 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 recommend avoiding black hat solutions, strategies, sites, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of sites like Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t require using black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this article series 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 used by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen in the previous section that most small business owners 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 to be strategic and work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of choosing this approach …
(Posting content to services one at a time can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose this time-saving approach 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 once, and automate the distribution of your content to all other 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 website or blog as described in Part 2. Then, expertly configure everything as described in Part Three. After all this is in place, you can then automate these processes with plugins such as the ones shown below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic System – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a number of plugins that can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically to other blogs via RSS
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn 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 useful features.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (as described in Part 3.) …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
You can share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Share your content on several social networks.)
After all of the settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings in the post publishing area.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they will be automatically syndicated online.)
Jetpack provides a hands-free, automated way to create more exposure for your content online on social media sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting system that lets your visitors engage with your website, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress built-in commenting feature with a number of third-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they like, +1, or tweet your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they type their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included below their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv Pro version can help attract more comments and improve user engagement on your site.)
For more details about this powerful plugin, go here:
Social LinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a plugin that lets you syndicate and drip-feed your content, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – drip-feed content automatically to many traffic-generating websites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to dozens of traffic-generating sites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Folkd, Instapaper, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Blogger, Sett, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
Visit this website to learn more about the benefits of this plugin: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get actionable information about your content marketing campaigns), we have written a detailed article listing many social media measurement tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives. More information:
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 Blueprint: Automated Content Syndication Phase – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been set up and configured, all you have to do is publish great content regularly to automatically attract web traffic.
We have created an entire email series designed to help you never run out of content ideas for posting to your website or blog:
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 addressed in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Four
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