Welcome to Part Four of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to drive traffic automatically to your site using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part One, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to automatically bring traffic is add content on a consistent basis!)
In Part 2, we discuss critical setup decisions. We help you understand 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 site has been built with 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.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you will configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part 4, we explain how to set up various WordPress plugins that can help bring new visitors automatically to your website or blog.
Why Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on which marketing expert you listen to, you could find yourself trying to spend a couple of hours or more per day promoting your business on social media.
Many small businesses simply 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 online marketing experts are recommending. If you spend 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 up and running is how most small business owners spend their working hours. Infographic source: NFIB)
Small businesses spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
Research conducted in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent around 6 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 usage of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was done today, the numbers would probably be 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. Source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend more time promoting and marketing themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited time, budget, and resources and many different business areas to focus on need 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 various social sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. These companies can and will make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without prior notification. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on someone else’s asset? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can control your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Automating business systems and processes to save time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increasing availability of so many new channels for promoting and marketing a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited time, resources, and marketing budget. For example:
- Which channels should you invest more time, budget, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not own (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, 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 we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that allows you to automate the web traffic generation with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should invest more of your time, efforts, and budget 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 urge you to avoid using black hat websites, software, techniques, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the policies and terms of service of companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not need to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this article series is not to game online services or flaunt their terms of service, but to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and increase your exposure online to 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 many small business owners lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to different marketing channels one at a time can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose this time-saving 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 your content distribution to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social sites and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content automatically to other blogs and online 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 or blog as shown in Part 2. Then, expertly configure it as described in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you can then connect all of the dots using 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 traffic-generation WordPress plugins that can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically via RSS to other websites
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, 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 loads of great features.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack – Publicize feature)
Configure this section to share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Share your posts on several social media sites.)
After all plugin and account settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account options show in your publishing area.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, 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 to learn more about the benefits of using this plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress native commenting function allows your site users to interact with your web site, post new comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content as part of an online community.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature using third-party plugins that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them online.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can create more user engagement on your web site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like search-indexable backlinks, social enticements for sharing your content, using keywords in the name, and adding twitter names to comments. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they are entering their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can choose to include with their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your website.)
Go here to learn more about the benefits of this plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – Content distribution plugin for WordPress)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that lets you automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to dozens of authority sites, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed content automatically to over 30 traffic-generating sites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to over 30 authority websites, such as:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Diigo, Instapaper, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about this powerful plugin, visit this site: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get useful information about your content marketing efforts), we have written a comprehensive article listing several social media monitoring tools that you may want to check out. To learn more, visit this page:
The above are just some examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating and sharing 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: Content Distribution Phase – Summary
Once your site and plugins have been expertly configured and set up, all you then have to do to automatically start generating web traffic is post new content consistently.
If you need endless ideas for posting content on your site, we recommend subscribing to our email training course on content marketing here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is addressed in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Part 4
To read the rest of this article series, click here:
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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