Welcome to Part 4 of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a site into an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to automatically drive web traffic is publish new content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we look at the setup phase of this process. We help you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing site is built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we look at important configuration decisions.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you will configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, we explain how to set up various plugins that can get new traffic automatically to your site.
Why Automate Your Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on which marketing expert you listen to, you could find yourself investing an hour each day (or more) promoting your business on social media.
Many business owners simply lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are prescribing. If you spend half your day checking LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook in addition to writing articles for your blog or website, how does anything else in your business get done?
(Keeping a business up and running is how most small business owners spend their working hours. Infographic source: NFIB)
Small business owners spend most of their working hours trying to keep their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
Marketing research conducted by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent six or more hours each 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 done today, the numbers would probably be even higher.
- More than half of all small businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more creating a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media consumed the most time online.
(Businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: 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 areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budget, resources, and time and many different areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social media websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. These companies can make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own real estate and post your content automatically to other websites.
Automating systems and process to leverage time is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth channels for marketing and promoting a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited time, resources, and marketing budget. For example:
- Which of these channels should you invest more budget, efforts, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not own (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your 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 your web traffic generation with WordPress.
With this formula, 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 costs,
- Determine which channels you should focus more budget, time, and your efforts on,
- Invest most of your efforts building your own asset 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 recommend avoiding black hat techniques, solutions, sites, and anything designed to “game” or violate the terms of service and policies of sites like Google, Facebook, YouTube, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not have to involve using black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this article is to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and marketing efforts, and increase your exposure online to 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 business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts recommend. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited time, budget, and resources.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to services one by one can be 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 once, and automate the distribution of your content to all other services.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media services 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 WordPress site as described in Part 2. Then, configure everything as shown in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you can then connect all of the dots using plugins like the ones discussed below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a number of WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content via RSS to other web properties
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and more as soon as you publish your content using a plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many useful features.
After installing Jetpack, 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 …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
You can share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Distribute your content automatically to several social sites.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details appear in the Publish box.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically get shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it is automatically syndicated online.)
Visit the plugin website to learn more about this great plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress built-in commenting function allows your site users to interact with your web site, post new comments, reply to other users and engage with your content.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature using 3rd-party plugins that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they like, +1, or tweet your post. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which can be included with their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv can attract more comments and traffic and create more user engagement on your website or blog.)
To learn more about the benefits of using this handy plugin, go here:
SocialLinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – Content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that lets you automatically syndicate and drip-feed content, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate and drip-feed your content to over 30 authority platforms)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to many social platforms, like:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Kippt, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blogger, Overblog, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
To learn more about the benefits of this plugin, go here: 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), or if you want to learn more about social media tracking tools that you may want to check out, refer to this article:
The above are just some 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 Blueprint: Automated Content Sharing Stage – Summary
Once your website and plugins have been expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do to automatically bring web traffic is publish fresh content consistently.
We have created a complete email training series designed to help you never run out of great content ideas for posting to your website or blog:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is explained in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Section Four
To continue reading this article, click on the link below:
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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