Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a website into an automated web traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part 1, we provided an overview of the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is post content on a regular basis to automatically begin bringing more traffic!)
In Part Two, we discuss the setup phase. We explain the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your website is built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we focused on the configuration phase.
Here, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three we explain how to configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this article, we discuss ways to automate the traffic system with different plugins.
Why Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on which marketing guru you listen to, you could end up investing 1-2 hours every day (or more) posting content on social media.
Many small business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts advise doing. If you are spending hours posting updates on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn in addition to planning and writing content for your blog or website, how can anything in your business get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their working hours just keeping their businesses up and running. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many businesses spend most of their time trying to keep their businesses up and running. On top of this, 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 in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent six or more hours each week on social media (the other half of 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 businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more creating a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media was the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Businesses are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to focus their time on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited time, budget, and resources and many different business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other 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 have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These sites can make decisions that impact your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on someone else’s real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can have complete control of your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Investing in automation to leverage time is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited marketing budgets, resources, and time. For example:
- Which of these channels do you focus more of your time, budget, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting 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-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula for automating the web traffic generation with WordPress.
With this method, 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 costs,
- Determine which channels you should focus more time, budget, and efforts on,
- Invest most of your time 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 websites, solutions, techniques, and anything designed to “game” or violate the terms of service and policies of sites like Facebook, YouTube, Google, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not need to involve using black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing here is to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from websites visited 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 most small business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts advise. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, time, and resources.
So, instead of posting content to individual marketing channels, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to services individually can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not do 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 your content distribution to all other services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media sites and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) 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 this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as shown in Part 2. Then, get it all configured as described in Part 3. After all this is in place, you then automate your content distribution with plugins such as the ones shown in the section below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic System – Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at a few traffic-generating WordPress plugins that can be used to:
- Post content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically to other blogs via RSS
Jetpack Plugin
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 WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many useful functions.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (which you would have set up in Part Three.) …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Share your content automatically on various social media 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 settings in your publishing box.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they are automatically shared online.)
Go here for more information about the benefits of using this handy plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting function lets your blog readers interact with your web site, post comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature with a third-party plugin that integrates your comments with social media, helping to spread and share your content around.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they +1, like, or tweet your post. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they are entering their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can choose to include with their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv can attract more comments and web traffic and improve user engagement on your website.)
To learn more about this handy plugin, visit the plugin website:
SocialLinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
SocialLinkMachine is a plugin that allows you to syndicate and drip-feed your content, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate and drip-feed content automatically to dozens of social websites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to over 30 traffic-generating websites, like:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Diigo, Kippt, Zotero, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Blogger, Rebel Mouse, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
To learn more about the benefits of this plugin, go here: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get useful information about your content marketing campaigns), we have created a comprehensive article listing a number of social media measurement tools that are worth knowing about. For more details, go here:
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 System: Automated Content Distribution Process – Summary
Once you have your site and plugins set up and configured, all you need to do then to automatically generate traffic is add new content consistently.
If you need endless content ideas for your site, we recommend subscribing to our email training series on growing your business with content marketing here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as you can. This step is explained in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 4
To continue reading about this topic, click here:
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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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