Welcome to Part 4 of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part 1, we described the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is publish great content on a consistent basis to begin attracting traffic!)
In Part Two, we discuss critical setup decisions. We help you understand the best way to start 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 is built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part Three, we look at configuring the system.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, we will look at ways to automate the traffic-generation process with plugins.
Why Automate Your Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on which business marketing gurus you talk to, you could find yourself trying to spend an hour or two (or more) every day promoting your business on social media, as well as trying to run your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Most business owners lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are prescribing. If you were to spend half a day checking LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook in addition to writing articles for your blog or website, how could you get anything in your business done?
(Keeping a business up and running is how most small businesses spend their working hours. Infographic source: NFIB)
Many business owners spend most of their time simply keeping 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 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent six or more hours each 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 survey was done today, the figures would probably be 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.
(Small businesses are spending more time marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time promoting and marketing themselves online in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to focus their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budget, time, and resources and many different areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on various social media sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. These companies can make decisions that affect your business without consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Automating systems and process to leverage time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth channels for promoting and marketing a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited resources, time, and budget. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels do you focus more efforts, budget, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (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 include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic Generation With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that lets you automate the traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this method, 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 web marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more efforts, time, and budget 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 urge that you stay away from all black hat sites, strategies, tools, and anything designed to “game” or violate the policies and terms of service of companies like YouTube, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not need to involve using black hat methods!)
The focus of this article is not to manipulate online services or break their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen in the previous section how many small businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to different services one by one is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not use this time-saving 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 one-time, and automate your content distribution to all other services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social sites and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as shown in Part 2. Then, get it configured as described in Part Three. After all this is in place, you can then connect all of the dots with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic System – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a few traffic-generation plugins that can help:
- Post content to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically via RSS feeds to other online properties
Jetpack
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 WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with loads of useful functions.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to your 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 on Jetpack)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts on several social media networks.)
After configuring all plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings show in the Publish box.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it is automatically syndicated online.)
Visit the plugin site to learn more about this plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting feature lets your visitors engage with your website, post new comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions as part of a social community.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature with 3rd-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to share and spread them online.
For example, a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they plus1, tweet, or like your post. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they are entering their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included with their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website.)
To learn more about the benefits of using this plugin, go here:
Social LinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – Content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin that allows you to syndicate content to dozens of traffic-generating sites, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate content to many authority websites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to dozens of social websites, including:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Linkagogo, Instapaper, Reddit, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Rebel Mouse, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
Go here to learn more about the benefits of using this plugin: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get actionable information about your content distribution efforts), we have written a detailed article about social media measurement tools that are worth checking out and knowing about. For more details, go here:
The above are just a few examples of the many content distribution plugins that are available to WordPress users.
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: Automated Content Syndication Stage – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been expertly configured and fully set up, all you then need to do is publish new content regularly to automatically attract web traffic organically.
If you need endless content ideas for your site, we recommend subscribing to our email training series here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is explained in the next section of the WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section 4
To continue reading about this topic, 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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