Welcome to Part Four of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your website into an automated web traffic machine using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part 1, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is add web content on a consistent basis to begin attracting more traffic!)
In Part Two, we discussed critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In Part Three, we looked at the configuration phase of the automation system.
In this step, we configure all the settings that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 we show you how to configure all the settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part 4, we will discuss ways to automate your traffic with plugins.
Why You Should Consider Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on who you listen to, you could find yourself spending 1-2 hours per day (or more) posting content on social media.
Most business owners simply lack the time, human resources and budget to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts recommend doing. If you spend hours checking Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook in addition to researching and writing articles for your blog or website, how can anything in your business get done?
(Keeping their business up and running is how most small business owners spend their working hours. Infographic: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many businesses 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 make sales in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent six or more 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 was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was conducted today, the numbers would probably be significantly higher.
- More than half of all small 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. Image source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend more time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, marketing budgets, and time and many different areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These sites often will make decisions that affect your business without consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on someone else’s asset? With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other online accounts.
Automating business systems and processes to leverage time is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increased availability of hundreds of new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited resources, budget, and time. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels do you focus more 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. YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on 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-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy for automating your traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should invest more time, efforts, and budget on,
- Invest most of your efforts building your own asset 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 techniques, websites, software, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of companies like Facebook, YouTube, Google, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t require the use of black hat techniques!)
The focus of this series of articles is to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from 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, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited time, budget, and resources.
So, instead of posting content to different marketing channels, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels is very time-consuming!)
Why not choose this one 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 your content distribution to all other channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media sites and 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 site as shown in Part 2. Then, get everything configured as explained in Part 3. After all this is in place, you then automate the process using plugins such as the ones shown in the next section.
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 media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content to other web properties via RSS feeds
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus 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 useful features.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part Three …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack – Publicize)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Share your posts automatically on several social media sites.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details displays in your publishing section.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it will be automatically distributed online.)
To learn more about the benefits of using this WordPress plugin, visit the plugin website: Jetpack by WordPress.com
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress commenting function lets your blog readers engage with your site, post new comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content as part of a social community.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature with a 3rd-party plugin that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread your content around.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they +1, tweet, or like your content. This plugin will visit the website or blog 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 website.)
Go here to learn more about using this great plugin:
Social Link Machine
(Social LinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a plugin that allows you to automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to over 30 traffic-generating websites, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed content automatically to many online sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to over 30 online sites, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Folkd, Plurk, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
Visit the plugin website to learn more about 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 distribution efforts), we have written a detailed article about social media tracking tools that are worth checking out and knowing about. Go here to learn more:
The above are just a few 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 Blueprint: Content Distribution Stage – Summary
Once your website or blog and plugins have been expertly configured and set up, all you need to do then to begin attracting new traffic is post new content on a consistent basis.
We have created an entire email training series aimed at helping you never run out of great content for posting to your website or blog:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as you can. This step is covered in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read more, click here:
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