Welcome to Part Four of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to drive visitors automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part 1, we describe the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is post fresh content consistently to drive web traffic!)
In Part Two, we focus on the setup phase of the traffic automation system. We help you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing site was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we looked at configuring WordPress.
In this step, we configure all the settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you will configure all the settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this step, we look at ways to automate the traffic-generation process using a number of WordPress plugins.
Why Automate The Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on which experts you talk to, you could find yourself investing an hour or two per day (or more) posting content on social media.
Most small business owners lack the time, resources and financial means to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts prescribe. If you were to spend hours checking Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook in addition to planning and writing content for your blog or website, how would you get anything in your business done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their working hours keeping 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:
- 43% 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 use of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was conducted today, the numbers would most likely be significantly 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 every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend more time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and budget 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 websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. These companies often will make decisions that can significantly impact your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building content on someone else’s real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other sites.
Investing in business automation to leverage time is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increased availability of so many new channels for promoting and marketing a business creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited time, resources, and budget. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels should you focus more efforts, time, and budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, 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 Web Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy for automating the web traffic generation 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 channels you should focus more of your 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 websites, software, strategies, and anything designed to “game” or violate the policies and terms of service of sites like Facebook, Pinterest, Google, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t need to involve using black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this article is not to manipulate online services or bypass their terms of service, but to show you how to be smart with your limited resources and automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and marketing efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites visited by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that most businesses 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 be strategic with your limited resources, budget, and time.
So, instead of choosing this approach …
(Posting content to different channels can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not use a smarter, time-saving approach like 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 content one-time, and automate the distribution of your content to all other services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media channels 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as explained in Part 2. Then, expertly configure your site settings as described in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you can then automate these processes using plugins such as the ones listed in the next section.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a look now at some WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Post content to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content to other blogs via RSS
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, 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 …
(Jetpack – Publicize feature)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Share your posts automatically on several social media networks.)
After all of the account and plugin settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings in the publishing box.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically get shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they will be automatically syndicated online.)
Visit this website to learn more about this plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting feature that allows your visitors to engage with your website, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can expand 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, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can improve user engagement on your website or blog. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like SEO backlinks, social enticements for content-sharing, adding twitter names to comments, and using keywords in the user name. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they are typing their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can include at the bottom of their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and visitors and improve user engagement on your website or blog.)
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, visit the plugin website:
Social LinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – Content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a plugin that allows you to syndicate and drip-feed content, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed content to many authority sites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to many traffic-generating sites, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Plurk, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Rebel Mouse, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
Go here to learn more about the benefits of this powerful plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get useful information about your content distribution campaigns), we have created a comprehensive article listing a number of social media measurement tools that are worth knowing about. Go here to learn more:
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: Content Sharing Stage – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do to start attracting traffic is add new content regularly.
If you need endless content ideas for your site, then subscribe to our email training course on content marketing here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is addressed in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read more, click here:
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