Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to turn your site into an automated web traffic machine using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part 1, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to start driving traffic is add content consistently!)
In Part 2, 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 things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we discussed the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, we explain how to set up various plugins that can drive web traffic automatically to your website simply by adding web content.
Why You Should Consider Automating The Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which experts you get your advice from, you could end up trying to spend 1-2 hours or more per day promoting your business on social media in addition to trying to manage your business, your content and your web presence.
Most business owners lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are advising. If you were to spend half a day checking LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter in addition to planning and writing articles for your website or blog, how would you get anything in your business done?
(Keeping a business up and running is how most small business owners spend their time. Infographic source: NFIB)
Small businesses spend most of their time trying to keep their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay 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 small businesses surveyed spent 6 or more hours each week on social media (the other half of 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 most likely be even higher.
- More than half of all businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more to create a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media consumed the most time online.
(Businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and marketing budget and many different business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social media websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These sites often will make decisions that can significantly impact your business without consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building content on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other online accounts.
Automating systems and process to save time is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increasing availability of hundreds of new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited time, resources, and budget. For example:
- Which channels should you invest more of your budget, time, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that do not belong to you (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Web Traffic Generation With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that allows you to automate the web traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more efforts, time, and your budget on,
- Invest most of your 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 strongly recommend avoiding black hat strategies, websites, software, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the policies and terms of service of companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t need to involve using black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing here is to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and get additional exposure online from websites 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, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different 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 your content distribution to all other services.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media sites and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content 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 this done?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress website as described in Part 2. Then, expertly configure it as described in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then automate your content distribution using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at a few WordPress plugins that can:
- Distribute content to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content via RSS to other blogs
Jetpack by WordPress.com
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus and more as soon as you publish new content using a plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many useful features.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part 3 …
(Make sure that Jetpack 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 Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Share your posts automatically on several social accounts.)
After all settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account options in the post publishing area.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically be shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they will be automatically shared online.)
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, visit this website: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting function that lets your site users interact with your web site, post comments, reply to other users and engage with your content as part of a community.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature using a 3rd-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content around.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like social enticements for sharing content, using keywords in the username, search-indexable backlinks, and the ability to add twitter usernames to comments. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they enter their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included with their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website or blog.)
To learn more about this handy plugin, go here:
Social LinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – Content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that allows you to automatically syndicate your content to over 30 authority sites, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed content to over 30 social websites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to many online sites, including:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Folkd, Plurk, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Overblog, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about this handy plugin, go here: SocialLinkMachine
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 listing many social media monitoring tools and technologies that you may want to check out. More information:
The above are just some 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 Syndication Process – Summary
Once you have your site and plugins expertly configured and fully set up, all you then have to do to automatically generate web traffic is add web content on a regular basis.
We have created an entire email email-based training course designed to help you come up with limitless content ideas for posting to your site:
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 our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Section 4
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