WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Part 4 (Automation)

Welcome to Part Four of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to turn your site into an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.

So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:

In Part One of this article series, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …

(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is publish great content consistently to automatically generate more traffic!)

In Part 2, we discuss the setup phase of the traffic automation process. We help you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website has been built using WordPress.

(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)

In Part Three, we focus on important configuration decisions.

Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …

(In Part Three we show you how to configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)

In this section, we will show you how to set up various plugins that can bring new visitors automatically to your website simply by publishing content.

Why Automating The Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense

Depending on which online marketing experts you listen to, you could find yourself trying to spend an hour a day (or more) posting content on social media while also trying to manage your business, your content and your web presence.

Many business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts advise doing. If you are spending all of your time checking Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter in addition to writing articles for your blog or website, how can anything else in your business get done?

(Keeping a business up and running is how most small businesses spend their time. Source: NFIB)

Many businesses spend most of their time trying to keep their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.

Marketing research conducted in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:

• 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent at least six hours each week on social media (most of the other businesses surveyed that used 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 research was conducted today, the numbers would probably be higher.
• More than half of all small 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 every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse)

As businesses spend more time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to focus their time on other equally important areas …

(Businesses with limited marketing budget, resources, and time and many business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)

One other thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or StumbleUpon. These companies often will make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can control your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.

Investing in automation to save time is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the availability of many new channels for marketing and promoting a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited time, resources, and marketing budgets. For example:

• Which channels should you focus more of your time, efforts, and budget on?
• Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, 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 we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that lets you automate your traffic-getting process with WordPress.

With this strategy, 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 online marketing channels,
• Determine which marketing channels you should focus more budget, efforts, and your time 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 recommend avoiding black hat websites, methods, tools, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the policies and terms of service of services like Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc..

(Web traffic automation doesn’t have to involve the use of black hat techniques!)

What we are focusing in this article series is not to game online services or flaunt 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 efforts, and increase your exposure online to sites used by your target audience.

An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System

We’ve just seen in the previous section that many small business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts advise. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited budget, time, and resources.

So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …

(Posting content to individual marketing channels can be very time-consuming!)

Why not opt for a smarter, time-saving strategy 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 once, and automate the distribution of your content to all other marketing channels.

You can:

• Distribute content automatically to social media sites and social 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 explained in Part 2. Then, get it all configured as shown in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you then automate your content distribution with plugins such as the ones discussed in the next section.

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-generating plugins that can help:

• Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
• Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
• Distribute content to other blogs via RSS

Jetpack

You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and more as soon as you publish your content using a plugin like JetPack.

Download URL: https://wordpress.org/plugins/jetpack

Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many useful functions.

After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (as described in Part Three.) …

(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)

Next, activate the Publicize feature …

(Activate the Publicize feature)

You can share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …

(Publicize your content to various social media networks.)

After configuring all plugin and account 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 a new post, it will automatically get shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …

(As soon as content is published, it is automatically shared online.)

Visit the plugin site to learn more about this plugin: Jetpack by WordPress.com

CommentLuv

(CommentLuv)

WordPress has a built-in commenting feature that allows your blog readers to interact with your web site, post comments, reply to other users and engage with your content.

You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature using third-party commenting plugins that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share your content online.

For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your web site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like search-indexable backlinks, using keywords in the name, the ability to add twitter names to comments, and social enticements for sharing your content. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they are entering their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can include at the bottom of their comment when they click submit.

(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website.)

For more information about using this WordPress plugin, go here: CommentLuv Premium Plugin For WordPress

Social Link Machine

(Social Link Machine – Content distribution plugin for WordPress)

Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin that lets you drip-feed your content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …

(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed your content to dozens of online sites)

With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to over 30 traffic-generating platforms, like:

• Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Folkd, Kippt, Reddit, etc.
• Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, Tumblr, etc.
• Social Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
• Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
• Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.

To learn more about this WordPress plugin, visit the plugin website: Social LinkMachine

Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get actionable information about your content distribution campaigns), we have written a detailed article about social media tracking tools and technologies that will help you keep track of online trends, monitor competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that affect your business, etc, see what online conversations are taking place that could affect your business,etc. For more details, go here: Social Media Tracking Resources For WordPress Users

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:

How To Kickstart The WordPress Traffic Automation Process To Your Website Or Blog

WordPress Traffic Automation System: Content Sharing Phase – Summary

Once your website or blog and plugins have been set up and expertly configured, all you then need to do to attract new traffic is add fresh content on a consistent basis.

We have created a complete email training series aimed at helping you never run out of great content for posting to your website or blog:

Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is explained in the next article in the WordPress Traffic System series.

This is the end of Section 4

To read more, click here:

Web Traffic Blueprint Part 5 – How To Attract More Web Visitors For Your Business

***

Disclaimer: This site has no direct association with WordPress or any of the products written about on this site. We may receive financial benefits from the purchase of services and/or products advertised on this site. All product images remain the copyright of their respective owners, comply with all license terms and agreements of use to the best of our knowledge and are used solely for illustrative or training purposes.

***

Did you find this article useful? Feel free to use the social buttons below to share this tutorial with other new blog owners.