WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Part 4 (Automation)

Welcome to Part Four of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to grow your business online automatically using the WordPress CMS platform.

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

In Part One, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …

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

In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase of the blueprint. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site was built with WordPress.

(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)

In Part Three, we look at the configuration phase of the traffic automation system.

Here, we configure all the settings that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …

(In Part 3 we explain how to configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)

In this step, we look at ways to automate the traffic-getting process with different plugins.

Why Automating The Traffic Generation Makes Sense

Depending on which marketing gurus you listen to, you could find yourself spending an hour or two every day (or more) promoting your business on social media, as well as managing your business, your content and your online presence.

Most businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are recommending. If you spent half a day checking Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn in addition to writing content for your blog or website, how would anything in your business ever get done?

(Keeping a business up and running is how most small business owners spend their time. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)

Many business owners spend most of their working hours keeping 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.

Marketing research done in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:

• 43% of all businesses surveyed spent 6 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 research was conducted today, the figures would most likely be significantly 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 each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse)

As businesses spend more time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other vital areas …

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

Another important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on a number of social websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. These sites can and will make decisions that impact your business without prior warning. Why invest so much effort and time building content on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can have complete control of your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other websites.

Investing in business automation to leverage time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited marketing budget, time, and resources. For example:

• Which of these marketing channels should you invest more budget, time, and your efforts on?
• Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you ultimately have little to no control over (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting your own domain?
• 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 share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy for automating your traffic generation with WordPress.

With this formula, you will be able to:

• Save time creating web content 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 time, efforts, and your 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 recommend avoiding black hat software, sites, techniques, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of services like Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc..

(Automating your web traffic doesn’t need to involve using black hat techniques!)

What we are focusing in this article is to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and increase your exposure online to websites that your target audience frequents.

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

We’ve just seen that most business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limitations.

So, instead of choosing this time-consuming approach …

(Posting content to different channels is extremely time-consuming!)

Why not use this time-saving approach 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 media channels and social bookmarking sites,
• Distribute comments and content automatically to other blogs and web properties using RSS
• Automatically import content (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 described in Part 2. Then, get it all configured as described in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you can then connect all of the dots using plugins.

The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …

WordPress Traffic System – Traffic-Getting Plugins

Let’s take a look now at some traffic-generating WordPress plugins that can help:

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

Jetpack

You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ 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 loads of great functions.

After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part 3 …

(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)

Next, activate a feature called Publicize …

(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)

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

(Publicize your posts automatically to various social media networks.)

After all settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.

The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …

(Publicize details show in your Publish section.)

Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically get shared on every account you have set up …

(As soon as new content is published, it will be automatically distributed online.)

Jetpack provides a hands-free, automated way to create more exposure for your content online on social networks.

CommentLuv

(CommentLuv)

The WordPress built-in commenting function allows your site users to engage with your website or blog, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content as part of an online community.

You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature with 3rd-party commenting plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to share and spread your content online.

For example, using a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they plus1, like, or tweet your content. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can include at the bottom of their comment after clicking submit.

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

For more details about this handy plugin, visit this website:

• CommentLuv Pro Plugin For WordPress

Social Link Machine

(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)

SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that allows you to automatically syndicate and drip-feed content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …

(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed content to many traffic-generating websites)

With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to many online platforms, such as:

• Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Folkd, Instapaper, Zotero, etc.
• Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Overblog, Tribe, etc.
• Social Media Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
• Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
• Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.

Visit this website to learn more about this great plugin: Social Link Machine

Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get useful information about your content distribution campaigns), go here to learn about social media measurement tools and technologies that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns:

• WordPress Social Media Measurement – Resources

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:

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

WordPress Traffic Automation System: Automated Content Distribution Phase – Summary

Once your WordPress site and plugins have been configured and set up, all you then need to do to automatically bring web traffic is add new content regularly.

If you need endless content ideas for your web site, then subscribe to our FREE email training course on growing your business with content marketing here:

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

This is the end of Section 4

To read the rest of this article series, click here:

• Web Traffic Blueprint Part Five – How To Create An Automated Traffic Generation Machine

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