Welcome to Part Four of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to create an automated web traffic generating machine using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part One of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to generate more traffic is add web content consistently!)
In Part 2, we look at critical setup decisions. We explain 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 website, and what to do if your site is built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we focus on important configuration decisions.
Here, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, we will discuss ways to automate traffic to your website using various WordPress plugins.
Why Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on which marketing expert you listen to, you could end up trying to spend an hour or more every day posting content on social media while also trying to run your business, creating content and managing your online presence.
Many small businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to employ the services of a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts prescribe. If you are spending most of your time checking Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing content for your website or blog, how does anything else in your business get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. Image source: NFIB)
Many business owners spend most of their working hours just keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
Marketing research conducted by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent at least 6 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 usage of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was done today, the figures would probably be even higher.
- More than half of all 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 are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other areas …
(Businesses with limited budgets, resources, and time and many different areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social media sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or StumbleUpon. These sites often will make decisions that affect your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can have complete control of your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Automating business systems and processes to leverage time is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increasing availability of hundreds of new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited resources, budgets, and time. For example:
- Which marketing channels should you focus more budget, time, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that do not belong to you (e.g. Facebook, 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 include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that allows you to automate the traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this method, 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 marketing 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 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 staying away from all black hat tools, strategies, sites, and anything designed to “game” or violate the policies and terms of service of services like Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t require using black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this article series is not to manipulate 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 so you can leverage your time and efforts, and increase your exposure online to websites frequented 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, many small businesses lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels one by one can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not use 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 one-time, and automate the distribution of your content to all other services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media services 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress website or blog as shown in Part Two. Then, get it configured as shown in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then automate your content distribution using plugins.
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 plugins that can be used to:
- Distribute content to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically via RSS to other blogs
Jetpack by WordPress.com
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 functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part Three …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack – Publicize)
You can share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Share your posts on several social accounts.)
After configuring all of the account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize options displays in your publishing area.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they will be automatically distributed online.)
Visit this site to learn more about the benefits of using this handy plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting function lets your blog readers interact with your site, post comments, reply to other users and engage with your content as part of a community.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature using 3rd-party commenting plugins that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can create more user engagement on your web site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like using keywords in the name, SEO backlinks, adding twitter names to comments, and social enticements for content sharing. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can include below their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your site.)
Go here to learn more about the benefits of this plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – Content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a plugin that allows you to automatically drip-feed content, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – drip-feed content automatically to many traffic-generating websites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to dozens of traffic-generating websites, including:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Plurk, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
Visit the plugin website to learn more about the benefits of this powerful plugin: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get actionable information about your content marketing efforts), we have written a comprehensive article about social media tracking tools and technologies that you may want to check out. If you would like to know more here:
The above are just some 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 Blueprint: Content Sharing Phase – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins set up and configured, all you have to do then to automatically attract more web traffic is publish new content regularly.
We have created a complete email series designed to help you come up with limitless content for your site:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is explained in the next section of our WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read more, click here:
***
"Your training is the best in the world! It is simple, yet detailed, direct, understandable, memorable, and complete." Andrea Adams, FinancialJourney.org
***