Welcome to Part Four of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to turn a site into an automated web traffic machine using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part 1, we described the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to automatically attract new web traffic is post new content regularly!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase of this process. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we discussed the configuration phase of the automation blueprint.
Here, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three we explain how to configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section of the series, we discuss ways to automate the traffic-getting process using WordPress plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on who you listen to, you could find yourself investing a couple of hours or more every day posting content on social media.
Many businesses lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts recommend doing. If you are spending all of your time posting updates on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing content for your website or blog, how will you get anything in your business done?
(Keeping a business running is how most small business owners spend their working hours. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their time trying to keep their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
Research done by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent at least 6 hours per week on social media (the other half of businesses surveyed using social media spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This use of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was conducted today, the numbers would most likely be significantly higher.
- More than half of all small businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more creating a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media consumed the most time online.
(Businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse.com)
As small 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 marketing budget, time, and resources and many different areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social media websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. These companies can and will make decisions that affect your business without prior warning. Why invest so much time and effort building content on someone else’s real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other online properties.
Automating business processes to save time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth channels for promoting and marketing a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited resources, budgets, and time. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels do you focus more efforts, time, and your budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that belong to other people (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, 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 show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that lets you automate the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more of your budget, efforts, and time on,
- Invest most of your time and efforts building your own asset 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 software, websites, strategies, and anything designed to “game” or violate the terms of service and policies of services like Pinterest, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t have to involve using black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this article is to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites that your target audience frequents.
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 financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts recommend. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of posting content to individual marketing channels, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels individually can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not use this method 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 the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media services and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content 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 WordPress website as explained in Part 2. Then, get everything configured as shown in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you can then automate the content distribution with plugins like the ones shown in the following section.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some examples of WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically to other websites via RSS
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus, 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 features.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part 3 …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Publicize your content automatically to various social sites.)
After all account and plugin settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings in your Publish area.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it is automatically distributed online.)
Go here to learn more about this plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting function that allows your visitors to interact with your website, post new comments, reply to other users and engage with your content as part of an online community.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature using third-party commenting plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to share and spread your content online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they like, tweet, or +1 your content. 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 the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your site.)
Go here to learn more about using this powerful plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – Content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that allows you to automatically syndicate content, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – drip-feed content to dozens of social sites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to many online sites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Delicious, Diigo, Instapaper, Zotero, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
To learn more about using this WordPress plugin, go here: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get useful information about your content distribution campaigns), we have written a detailed article on social media monitoring tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns. Go here to learn more:
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 Automation Blueprint: Content Distribution Stage – Summary
Once your site and plugins have been set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do is publish fresh content consistently to automatically begin bringing more web traffic organically.
If you need help coming up with endless great ideas for posting content on your web site, then subscribe to our FREE email training course on content marketing here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as can be improved. This step is covered in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read more, click here:
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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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