Welcome to Part Four of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your site into an automated traffic generating machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part 1 of this article series, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to automatically attract more web traffic is post new content consistently!)
In Part 2, we discuss the setup phase of the traffic automation process. 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 two we show you where to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In Part 3, we discussed the configuration phase.
In this step, 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, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this article, we will discuss ways to automate the traffic system using various WordPress plugins.
Contents
Why It Makes Sense To Automate The Traffic Generation
Depending on which marketing experts you talk to, you could end up investing 1-2 hours per day (or more) promoting your business on social media in addition to trying to run your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Most small business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are advising. If you were to spend hours posting updates on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook in addition to planning and writing articles for your website or blog, how would anything else in your business ever get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent 6 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 survey was done today, the numbers 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 the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to prioritize their time on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited budgets, resources, and time and many different business areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on various social sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. These companies can make decisions that affect your business without prior notification. Why invest so much time and effort building content on someone else’s asset? With WordPress, you can control your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Investing in automation to save time is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increasing availability of so many new channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited time, resources, and marketing budget. For example:
- Which channels should you invest more of your efforts, time, and your budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic Generation With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that lets you automate your traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should invest 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 urge that you stay away from all black hat tools, sites, methods, and anything designed to “game” or violate the terms of service and policies of sites like YouTube, Facebook, Google.
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t require using black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this series of articles is not to manipulate web services or break their terms of service, but to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and 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
We’ve just seen that most small business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limited budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of posting content to each marketing channel, which can be very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different channels is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not do this 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 once, and automate the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) automatically to other blogs and online properties using RSS
- Import content automatically (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 2. Then, get it all configured as shown in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you can then automate the process using 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 brief look at a few plugins that can help to:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content via RSS to other online properties
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://wordpress.org/plugins/jetpack
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with loads of useful 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)
You can share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your content automatically on several social networks.)
After all settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize options show in the publishing area.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically get shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new posts are automatically shared online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides a hands-free, automated way to get more exposure for your content online on social networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting function that allows your site users to interact with your web site, post new comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions as part of a community.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature using a number of 3rd-party plugins that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share your content online.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they tweet, plus1, or like your post. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they are typing their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which can be included below their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your web site.)
Visit this site to learn more about the benefits of using this plugin: CommentLuv Premium
Social LinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a WordPress plugin that allows you to automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content, 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 automatically to many social sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to dozens of online sites, like:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Folkd, Kippt, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
Go here to learn more about this powerful plugin: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get actionable information about your content distribution efforts), go here for a detailed article about social media measurement tools that are worth knowing about: Media Tracking Tools That Can Help Grow Your Business Online
The above are just a few 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:
How To Kickstart The WordPress Traffic Automation Process To Your Website Or Blog
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Automated Content Distribution Phase – Summary
Once you have your website or blog and plugins configured and fully set up, all you need to do is post content on a regular basis to start generating web traffic.
We have created a complete email course aimed at helping you never run out of content for your website or blog:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is covered in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part 4
To continue reading about this topic, click here:
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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