Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic machine using WordPress.
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 web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is add content consistently to automatically begin attracting new traffic!)
In Part Two, we look at the setup phase. 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 existing site was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part 3, we discussed configuring WordPress.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure all the settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part 4, you will learn how to set up various WordPress plugins that can help get new traffic automatically to your website or blog whenever you begin to post fresh content.
Why Automate The Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which marketing experts you get your advice from, you could find yourself spending an hour or more every day promoting your business on social media.
Most small business owners simply lack the time, human resources and budget to employ the services of a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are prescribing. If you spent hours posting updates on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter in addition to researching and writing articles for your website or blog, how would anything else in your business get done?
(Keeping a business up and running is how most small businesses spend their working hours. Image source: NFIB)
Small businesses spend most of their time trying to keep their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and make sales in order to survive.
A study of small businesses done by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent around six hours per 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 was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was conducted today, the figures would most likely 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.
(Small businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend more time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other equally important areas …
(Businesses with limited budget, time, and resources and many areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other 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 don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. These companies can and will make decisions that can significantly impact your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other online accounts.
Automating processes to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increased availability of hundreds of new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited marketing budget, resources, and time. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels do you focus more time, budget, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that do not belong to you (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that allows you to automate 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 web marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more time, budget, and your efforts 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 strongly recommend avoiding black hat tools, techniques, sites, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t require the use of black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this article series is not to game 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 increase your exposure online to sites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that many small businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts advise. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, time, and resources.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to individual marketing channels is very time-consuming!)
Why not opt for 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 the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social channels 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 of this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as explained in Part 2. Then, configure everything as explained in Part 3. Once all of 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 look now at a number of traffic-generation WordPress plugins that can:
- Syndicate content to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically via RSS feeds to other blogs
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, 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 many useful features.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part 3 …
(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, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Distribute your posts automatically to various social accounts.)
After configuring all of the plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account details in your post publishing area.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically be 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 to learn more about this great plugin: Jetpack by WordPress.com
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress commenting function allows your visitors to interact with your website or blog, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature with a number of third-party plugins that integrate with social media, helping to share and spread your content around.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they like, +1, or tweet your content. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can choose to include at the bottom of their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website or blog.)
To learn more about this plugin, visit the plugin website:
Social LinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a plugin that lets you drip-feed content, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate content to dozens of social websites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to over 30 traffic-generating platforms, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Linkagogo, Instapaper, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Sett, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
Visit this website to learn more about the benefits of this plugin: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get actionable information about your content distribution campaigns), we have written a comprehensive article where we explore a number of social media monitoring tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns. Go here for more information:
The above are just a few 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 Automation System: Automated Content Sharing Stage – Summary
Once your website or blog and plugins have been configured and fully set up, all you then need to do is post web content on a consistent basis to automatically begin attracting new traffic organically.
We have created a complete email email-based training course designed to help you never run out of great content ideas for your website or blog:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is explained in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Section Four
To keep reading, click here:
- Website Traffic Blueprint Part Five – Discover How To Create An Automated Traffic Generation Machine
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