Welcome to Part Four of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to turn a website into an automated traffic generation machine using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part One, we provide an overview of the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is add content on a consistent basis to drive traffic!)
In Part Two, we discuss the setup phase of the traffic automation process. We help you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part 3, we looked at the configuration phase.
Here, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three we show you how to configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, we will look at ways to automate the traffic-getting process using various WordPress plugins.
Why You Should Automate The Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which marketing guru you get your advice from, you could find yourself spending a couple of hours or more each day promoting your business on social media.
Many business owners 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 marketing experts prescribe. If you were to spend half a day posting updates on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter in addition to researching and writing articles for your website or blog, how would you get anything in your business done?
(Small businesses spend most of their working hours simply keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: NFIB)
Many businesses spend most of their working hours just keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and make sales in order to survive.
A study of small businesses done by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent six or more 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 usage of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was done today, the figures 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 spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend more time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other areas …
(Businesses with limited budgets, time, and resources and many different areas to focus on need 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 websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. These companies can make decisions that impact your business without prior warning. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on someone else’s real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can control your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other online properties.
Automating business systems and processes to save time is not new. Businesses have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increasing availability of so many new channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited resources, marketing budget, and time. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels should you focus more budget, time, and your efforts 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 your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that allows you to automate the web traffic generation 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 web marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more of your budget, efforts, and your time on,
- Invest most of your time and efforts building your own asset 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, techniques, sites, and anything designed to “game” or violate the policies and terms of service of companies like Twitter, Facebook, Google.
(Web traffic automation doesn’t have to involve the use of black hat methods!)
The focus of this article is not to manipulate web services or bypass their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites visited by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that many businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited resources, time, and budget.
So, instead of choosing this approach …
(Posting content to different marketing channels individually is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not use this 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 marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media channels and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) 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 WordPress website as shown in Part Two. Then, get it configured as explained in Part 3. After all this is in place, you can then automate the process with plugins such as the ones listed in the following section.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic System – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a few traffic-generating WordPress plugins that can help:
- Distribute content to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically via RSS to other blogs
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus 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 the WordPress.com account set up in Part 3 …
(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, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your content to various social accounts.)
After configuring all of the plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize options appear in the publishing section.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it is automatically shared online.)
Go here to learn more about this plugin: Jetpack by WordPress.com
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting system that lets your blog readers interact with your website, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature with a number of 3rd-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share them online.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they tweet, like, or +1 your content. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they are typing their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which they can include at the bottom of their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website.)
Visit this site to learn more about using this plugin:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a plugin for WordPress that lets you automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed your content automatically to over 30 authority sites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to many traffic-generating websites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Delicious, Diigo, Instapaper, Reddit, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Sett, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
Go here to learn more about this plugin: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get actionable information about your content marketing campaigns), or if you want to learn more about social media tracking tools that will help you keep track of online trends, monitor competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that can affect your business, etc, see what online conversations are taking place that can affect your business,etc, refer to this article:
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 Automation System: Automated Content Sharing Stage – Summary
Once your website and plugins have been expertly configured and set up, all you then have to do is add content consistently to automatically start attracting web traffic.
We have created an entire email email-based training course aimed at helping you never run out of great content for posting to your website:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is covered in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
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