Welcome to Part Four of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to turn a site into an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part 1 of this series, we provided an overview of the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to generate web traffic is add web content on a consistent basis!)
In Part 2, we focus on the setup phase of the automation process. We help 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 is built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part 3, we discuss important configuration decisions.
In this step, we configure all the settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you will configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section, you will learn how to set up various WordPress plugins that can help drive new traffic automatically to your website or blog.
Why Automating The Traffic Generation Makes Sense
Depending on which expert you listen to, you could find yourself investing an hour or more each day promoting your business on social media in addition to trying to run your business, creating content and managing your online presence.
Most businesses simply lack the time, resources and financial means to employ the services of a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are prescribing. If you spend half your day checking Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter in addition to planning and writing articles for your website or blog, how does anything else in your business get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: NFIB)
Many business owners 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 stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent 6 or more hours per week on social media (the rest 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 conducted today, the numbers would probably 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 was their most time-consuming online activity.
(Businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to prioritize their time on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budgets, resources, and time and many areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other important thing to consider 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 have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. These companies can and will make decisions that impact your business without consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on someone else’s real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other websites.
Automating systems and process 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 increasing availability of so many new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited budget, time, and resources. For example:
- Which of these channels should you invest more budget, time, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that belong to other people (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, 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-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that allows you to automate the traffic-getting 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 online marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should focus more efforts, budget, and time on,
- Invest most of your 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 recommend avoiding black hat tools, websites, methods, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the terms of service and policies of companies like Twitter, Facebook, Google.
(Web traffic automation does not have to involve the use of black hat methods!)
The purpose of this article is to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from websites visited 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, most small business owners lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts recommend. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of using this time-consuming approach …
(Posting content to individual channels is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not use this strategy 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 the distribution of your content to all other services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social sites and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) automatically to other blogs and online 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as described in Part Two. Then, expertly configure things as shown in Part 3. After all this is in place, you can then automate various processes with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a few traffic-generating WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content to other web properties via RSS
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn 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 installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (set up in Part 3.) …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your content automatically on several social media accounts.)
After configuring all of the account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings in the publishing area.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they are automatically distributed online.)
Go here to learn more about the benefits of using this handy plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting feature that lets your site users interact with your web site, post new comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions as part of an online community.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature using 3rd-party plugins that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content online.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they tweet, +1, or like your post. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they type their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can include with their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website or blog.)
Visit this website to learn more about the benefits of this handy plugin:
Social Link Machine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a plugin that lets you automatically drip-feed your content to many authority platforms, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate your content automatically to many social platforms)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to over 30 traffic-generating sites, such as:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Plurk, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blogger, Overblog, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about this great plugin, visit the plugin site: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get useful information about your content marketing campaigns), we have written a detailed article about social media measurement tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives here:
The above are just a few 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: Content Syndication Process – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site and plugins expertly configured and fully set up, all you then need to do is post new content on a regular basis to attract web traffic.
We have created an entire email email-based training course aimed at helping you come up with unlimited content ideas for your website or blog:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as you can. This step is explained in the next article in our WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Four
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