Welcome to Part Four of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part One, we provide an overview of the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is post content on a regular basis to generate more traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase. We explained the best way to get started 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 existing website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In Part Three, we focus on the configuration phase of the automation blueprint.
Here, we configure all the settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure all the settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part 4, you will learn how to set up various plugins that can help drive new visitors automatically to your website.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic Generation
Depending on which marketing experts you talk to, you could end up trying to spend a couple of hours or more per day promoting your business on social media, as well as running your business, creating content and managing your online presence.
Most small businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are prescribing. If you spend all of your time posting updates on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter in addition to planning and writing articles for your blog or website, how does anything in your business get done?
(Keeping their business up and running is how most small business owners spend their time. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent six or more hours per 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 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.
(Businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend more time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to prioritize their time on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and marketing budgets and many different business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. These sites often will make decisions that can significantly impact your business without prior warning. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other online accounts.
Automating processes to leverage time is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited time, resources, and marketing budget. For example:
- Which 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, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Web Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that allows you to automate your traffic-getting process 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 channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more of your time, efforts, and budget on,
- Invest most of your time 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 strongly urge you to avoid using black hat methods, software, websites, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the policies and terms of service of companies like Pinterest, Facebook, Google.
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t have to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this series of articles is 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 get additional exposure online from 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 how many business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, time, and resources.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different channels can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose a smarter, time-saving strategy like the one shown below 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 once, and automate your content distribution to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media channels and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) 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 get all this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as shown in Part 2. Then, get it all configured as explained in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you can then automate the content distribution with 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 brief look at a number of WordPress plugins that can:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically to other sites via RSS
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+ and more as soon as you publish new content using a WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many great features.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (which you would have set up in Part 3.) …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack – Publicize)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Share your content automatically on various social accounts.)
After all of the account and plugin settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details in your Publish section.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they are automatically distributed online.)
This is a hands-free way to create more exposure for your content online on social media networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting system that lets your site users interact with your website or blog, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature using a 3rd-party plugin that integrates with social media, helping to spread and share your content around.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can improve user engagement on your website. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like social enticements for sharing content, backlinks, ability to use keywords in the username, and adding twitter usernames to comments. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they type their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which they can choose to include with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and improve user engagement on your website or blog.)
To learn more about this handy plugin, visit the plugin site:
SocialLinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a plugin for WordPress that allows you to automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to over 30 online sites, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate and drip-feed content automatically to many traffic-generating websites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to dozens of online sites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Plurk, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Overblog, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
Go here to learn more about the benefits of this great plugin: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get actionable information about your content marketing efforts), go here for a detailed article about social media measurement tools and technologies that you may want to check out:
The above are just a few examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating 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:
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Automated Content Sharing Stage – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins expertly configured and set up, all you then need to do is add web content consistently to automatically start attracting web traffic organically.
We have created a complete email email-based training course aimed at helping you come up with unlimited content ideas for posting to your website:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is covered in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Section Four
To continue reading this article, click on the link below:
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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