Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to drive new traffic automatically to your website using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this 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 web site, all you have to do is post new content consistently to automatically generate web traffic!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase. We helped 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 existing website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we focus on the configuration phase of the traffic automation system.
Here, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 we explain how to configure all the settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In this step, we will show you how to set up various WordPress plugins that can help drive new traffic automatically to your site simply by posting fresh content on a consistent basis.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on who you talk to, you could end up trying to spend an hour or two (or more) per day promoting your business on social media.
Many business owners simply lack the time, resources and financial means to employ the services of a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are advising. If you spent all of your time checking Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing articles for your website or blog, how would anything else in your business ever get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their working hours 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 grow in order to survive.
Research done by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent six or more 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 usage of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey 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.
(Small businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to focus their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budgets, time, and resources 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 marketing and promoting your business on a number of social websites, 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 often will make decisions that impact your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can have complete control of your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other sites.
Automating systems and process to leverage time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the availability of hundreds of new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited time, resources, and budgets. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you invest more of your time, budget, and efforts 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 website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method for automating the web traffic generation with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should focus more efforts, budget, and your time on,
- Invest most of your time 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 urge you to avoid using black hat methods, solutions, sites, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of services like Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t require the use of 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 so you can leverage your time and efforts, and increase your exposure online to sites 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, most businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of using this time-consuming approach …
(Posting content to services individually can be very time-consuming!)
Why not choose 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 once, and automate the distribution of your content to all other services.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media channels and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content 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 as shown in Part Two. Then, get everything configured as shown in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you then automate the process with plugins like the ones discussed in the section below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some plugins that can:
- Post content to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content to other web properties via RSS feeds
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus and more as soon as you publish new content using a plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many great functions.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack – Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Distribute your posts automatically to several social media accounts.)
After all of the settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings in your post publishing area.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they will be automatically syndicated online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides you with a hands-free way to create more exposure online for your content on social sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting system lets your blog readers interact with your website or blog, post comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature with a number of 3rd-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to share and spread them online.
For example, a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like social enticements for sharing content, the ability to add twitter names to comments, using keywords in the user name, and backlinks. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they are entering 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 site.)
To learn more about using this powerful plugin, visit this site:
Social Link Machine
(Social LinkMachine – Content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that allows you to syndicate and drip-feed content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate content to over 30 social websites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to dozens of online websites, including:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Kippt, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blogger, Rebel Mouse, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about the benefits of using this handy plugin, go here: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get actionable information about your content distribution campaigns), we have written a detailed article on social media measurement tools that are worth knowing about. If you would like to know more here:
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 Sharing Phase – Summary
Once your website or blog and plugins have been set up and expertly configured, all you then need to do is post fresh content regularly to automatically begin bringing web traffic.
If you need great ideas for content that you can post on your website, then subscribe to our FREE email training series here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is explained in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Part Four
To keep reading about this topic, click on the link below:
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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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