Welcome to Part Four of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new visitors automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part One, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to automatically drive traffic is add web content on a regular basis!)
In Part Two, we discuss the setup phase of the blueprint. We explain the best way to get started 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 existing website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part Three, we discussed configuring WordPress.
In this step, we configure all the settings that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three we explain how to configure all the settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part 4, we will discuss ways to automate traffic generation using WordPress plugins.
Why Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on which marketing experts you get your advice from, you could end up investing 1-2 hours or more per day promoting your business on social media in addition to trying to run your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Most business owners lack the time, resources and financial means to run a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts recommend doing. If you are spending most of your time checking Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter in addition to writing articles for your website or blog, how can anything in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: NFIB)
Small businesses spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent around six hours each 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 done today, the numbers would most likely be even 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 their most time-consuming online activity.
(Small businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time promoting and marketing themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to focus their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited budgets, time, and resources and many business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on a number of 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 LinkedIn. These companies can and will make decisions that can significantly impact your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on someone else’s real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can control your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other sites.
Automating systems and process to save time is not new. Businesses have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited resources, time, and budgets. For example:
- Which of these channels should you focus more of your time, efforts, and your budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting your own website?
- 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 traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this strategy, 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 channels you should invest more of your efforts, budget, and time on,
- Invest most of your 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 urge you to avoid using black hat software, techniques, sites, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of services like LinkedIn, Facebook, Google.
(Automating your web traffic does not require the use of black hat methods!)
The purpose of this article is not to manipulate online services or flaunt their terms of service, but to show you how to 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
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, many small business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts advise. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of posting content to each service, which is extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not opt for this strategy 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 channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social channels and 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as shown in Part 2. Then, expertly configure your site settings as shown in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then automate the process with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic System – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some examples of WordPress plugins that can help:
- Syndicate content to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically to other web properties via RSS feeds
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, 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 loads of great features.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Distribute your posts to various social media accounts.)
After all settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize options displays in your Publish section.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it is automatically syndicated online.)
Jetpack provides a hands-free, automated way to create more exposure for your content online on social networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress commenting system lets your visitors engage with your website, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions as part of a community.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature with a 3rd-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread your content around.
For example, a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your web site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like backlinks, social enticements for sharing your content, adding twitter handles to comments, and ability to use keywords in the user name. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they type their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included with their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website.)
Visit the plugin site for more details about this plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – Content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that allows you to syndicate your content to many traffic-generating sites, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed your content to dozens of authority websites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to over 30 authority websites, like:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Linkagogo, Kippt, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
For more details about the benefits of using this plugin, visit the plugin site: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get actionable information about your content distribution efforts), we have written a comprehensive article on social media monitoring tools and technologies that you may want to check out here:
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 System: Content Sharing Phase – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been configured and fully set up, all you have to do then to attract more web traffic is add web content regularly.
We have created an entire email training series aimed at helping you come up with limitless content ideas for your website:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is addressed in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read more, click on the link below:
***
"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
***