Welcome to Part Four of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive traffic automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to begin bringing new web traffic is post great content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we look at critical setup decisions. We help you understand 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 existing site is built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In Part Three, we discuss configuring WordPress.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three we show you how to configure all the settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part 4, we look at ways to automate traffic generation with WordPress plugins.
Why You Should Automate The Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which marketing experts you get your advice from, you could find yourself spending an hour or two per day (or more) posting content on social media, as well as trying to run your business, creating content and managing your online presence.
Most businesses lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are recommending. If you are spending most of your time posting updates on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn in addition to planning and writing articles for your blog or website, how does anything in your business get done?
(Keeping a business up and running is how most small business owners spend their time. Infographic: NFIB)
Many businesses spend most of their time trying to keep 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 done by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent around six hours each 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 even 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 their most time-consuming online activity.
(Small businesses are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to prioritize their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budgets, resources, and time and many different areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on a number of social media sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. These sites can and will make decisions that affect your business without consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on someone else’s real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other websites.
Investing in business automation to save time is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited marketing budgets, resources, and time. For example:
- Which of these channels should you focus more of your time, budget, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring the benefits of building content on 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 Traffic Generation With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy for automating your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this strategy, 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 costs,
- Determine which channels you should invest more of your time, efforts, and 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 recommend avoiding black hat software, sites, methods, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the policies and terms of service of companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not need to involve using black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this article is not to manipulate web services or bypass their terms of service, but to show you how to be smart with your limited resources and automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from websites frequented 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 businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of posting content to different marketing channels individually, which can be very time-consuming …
(Posting content to 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 the distribution of your content to all other services.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social services and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) automatically to other blogs and web properties using RSS
- Import content automatically (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 or blog as explained in Part 2. Then, expertly configure it as explained in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you can then automate the content distribution with plugins like 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 traffic-generation WordPress plugins that can help:
- Syndicate content to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content to other sites via RSS feeds
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, 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 many great features.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part Three …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
You can share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your content automatically on several social media sites.)
After configuring all plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings displayed in your Publish area.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically get shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they will be automatically shared online.)
To learn more about the benefits of this powerful plugin, go here: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting function lets your site users interact with your website or blog, post new comments, reply to other users and engage with your content.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature using a third-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates your comments with social media, helping to spread and share them around.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like SEO backlinks, social enticements for content sharing, adding twitter handles to comments, and using keywords in the username. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they are entering 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 create more user engagement on your web site.)
Go here to learn more about the benefits of using this plugin:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin that allows you to drip-feed content, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate content automatically to over 30 traffic-generating platforms)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to many online platforms, like:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Folkd, Plurk, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
Go here to learn more about this powerful plugin: Social Link Machine
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 created a detailed article where we explore many social media measurement tools and technologies that are worth knowing about. More information:
The above are just some examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating 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 System: Automated Content Sharing Phase – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins fully set up and configured, all you have to do then is publish fresh content consistently to automatically begin bringing traffic.
We have created an entire email email-based training course designed to help you never run out of great content for posting to your site:
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 section of our WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section 4
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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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