Welcome to Part 4 of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive visitors automatically to your website using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part 1 of this article series, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is publish great content consistently to begin bringing traffic!)
In Part Two, we discuss the setup phase. We help you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing site was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In Part 3, we look at the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure all the settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 we show you how to configure all the settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this section of the series, you will learn how to set up various plugins that can get new traffic automatically to your website or blog as you begin posting fresh content on a consistent basis.
Why You Should Consider Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on who you talk to, you could find yourself spending an hour or more a day posting content on social media while also managing your business, your content and your web presence.
Many business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are advising. If you are spending hours checking Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in addition to planning and writing content for your website or blog, how does anything else in your business get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their working hours simply keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: NFIB)
Many business owners spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent six 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 research was done today, the figures would probably be even 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 spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend more time marketing and promoting themselves online in order to compete and survive, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and marketing budgets 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 promoting and marketing your business on various social sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or StumbleUpon. These companies can make decisions that impact your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much effort and time building content on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can have complete control of your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other sites.
Investing in business automation to leverage time is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increasing availability of many new channels for promoting and marketing a business online creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited marketing budgets, time, and resources. For example:
- Which marketing channels should 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 control (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that allows you to automate your traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web 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 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 urge you to avoid using black hat sites, software, methods, and anything designed to “game” or violate the terms of service and policies of companies like Pinterest, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t need to involve using black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this article series is to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution so you can 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
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, many businesses lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of posting content to different channels, which is extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to different services individually is extremely 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 once, and automate the distribution of your content to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social services and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content 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 get all this done?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as explained in Part Two. Then, get it configured as described in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then automate the process using plugins such as the ones discussed in the section below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a number of traffic-generation WordPress plugins that can:
- Syndicate content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content via RSS to other web properties
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ 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 functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (which you would have set up in Part 3.) …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your content automatically to several social sites.)
After all of the plugin and account settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings show in the publishing area.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically get shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they will be automatically shared online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides a hands-free way to create more exposure online for your content on social media sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress commenting system lets your blog readers engage with your website or blog, 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 using 3rd-party plugins 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 create more user engagement on your website. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like SEO backlinks, social enticements for content sharing, adding twitter names to comments, and using keywords in the name. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they are entering their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which they can include below their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website or blog.)
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, go here:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a plugin for WordPress that allows you to automatically drip-feed content to dozens of traffic-generating platforms, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate content automatically to many social websites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to many traffic-generating sites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Linkagogo, Kippt, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Overblog, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
To learn more about this powerful plugin, go here: Social LinkMachine
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 created a comprehensive article listing a number of social media monitoring tools and technologies that you may want to check out. More info:
The above are just some 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 Blueprint: Content Syndication Process – Summary
Once your website and plugins have been expertly configured and set up, all you have to do to attract more web traffic is add content on a consistent basis.
If you need endless content ideas for your web site, then subscribe to our FREE email training series here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is explained in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read the rest of this article, click here:
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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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