Welcome to Part Four of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to automate traffic to your website using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part One, we explained 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 to begin bringing new web traffic is add great content consistently!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase. 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 website was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we discuss the configuration phase of the blueprint.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you will configure all the settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part 4, we look at ways to automate your traffic using a number of plugins.
Why You Should Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which marketing expert you get your advice from, you could end up investing a couple of hours or more every day posting content on social media, as well as managing your business, your content and your web presence.
Most small business owners simply lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are prescribing. If you were to spend hours posting updates on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook in addition to writing articles for your website or blog, how would anything in your business ever get done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small businesses spend their working hours. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their time simply 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 grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses done by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent at least 6 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 use of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was conducted today, the numbers would probably be significantly 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.
(Businesses are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend more time promoting and marketing themselves online in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to focus their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited time, marketing budget, and resources and many areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social media sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. These sites can and will make decisions that affect your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much time and effort building content on rented 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 and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the availability of many new channels for promoting and marketing a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited time, resources, and budgets. For example:
- Which of these channels should you focus more of your budget, time, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that belong to other businesses (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method for automating your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more budget, time, and efforts 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 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 websites, solutions, techniques, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of services like Facebook, Google, YouTube, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not need to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
The focus of this article is not to manipulate web services or flaunt their terms of service, but to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution so you can 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
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, most small business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of posting content to different services one at a time, which is extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to services individually is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not use a smarter, time-saving approach like the one shown below 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 your content distribution to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social channels and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) automatically 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as explained in Part Two. Then, get everything configured as described in Part 3. After all this is in place, you then automate the process with plugins such as the ones discussed in the following section.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at some examples of WordPress plugins that can be used to:
- Syndicate content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically to other blogs via RSS
Jetpack by WordPress.com
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn 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 functions.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part Three …
(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 Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts automatically on various social sites.)
After configuring all of the account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings show in your post publishing box.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically get shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they will be automatically syndicated online.)
Visit the plugin website for more details about using this plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress native commenting system allows your site users to interact with your website, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions as part of a social community.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature with third-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help attract more comments and improve user engagement on your website. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like the ability to add twitter handles to comments, SEO backlinks, using keywords in the username, and social enticements for sharing content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they type their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can include with their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website or blog.)
To learn more about this handy plugin, go here:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin that lets you syndicate and drip-feed content, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – drip-feed content to dozens of social platforms)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to over 30 traffic-generating platforms, like:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Diigo, Instapaper, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
To learn more about this plugin, visit this site: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get useful information about your content marketing efforts), we have written a comprehensive article where we explore several social media measurement tools that are worth checking out and knowing about. Go here for more details:
The above are just a few 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 Blueprint: Content Sharing Process – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been fully set up and expertly configured, all you then need to do to automatically begin attracting web traffic is post content on a consistent basis.
If you need great ideas for posting content on your site, we recommend subscribing to our email training course on growing your business online with content marketing here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is covered in the next section of the WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Part 4
To read the rest of this article series, click on the link below:
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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