Welcome to Part Four of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part One, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to begin bringing new traffic is publish web content consistently!)
In Part 2, we focus on the setup phase. 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 website, and what to do if your existing site is built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we looked at the configuration phase of the blueprint.
In this step, we configure all the settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 you will configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section of the article series, we will show you how to set up various plugins that can drive traffic automatically to your website or blog as you begin to add web content on a consistent basis.
Why You Should Consider Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which marketing gurus you listen to, you could end up investing an hour each day (or more) posting content on social media.
Many businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to run a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts recommend. If you are spending half your day checking LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook in addition to researching and writing articles for your blog or website, how does anything in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. Image source: NFIB)
Many business owners spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
Marketing research done by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent around 6 hours each week on social media (most of the other businesses surveyed that used 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 done today, the figures would most likely 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 consumed the most time online.
(Businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend more time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited budgets, time, and resources 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 promoting and marketing your business on various social media sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. These companies can make decisions that can significantly affect your business without prior warning. Why invest so much effort and time building content on someone else’s asset? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own virtual 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 Digital Age, however, the exponential growth channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited marketing budgets, time, and resources. For example:
- Which marketing channels should you invest more of your budget, time, and your efforts 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 ignoring the benefits of building content on your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
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 formula that lets you automate the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more of your budget, efforts, and your time 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 strongly recommend avoiding black hat sites, techniques, tools, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of sites like Facebook, Google, Pinterest, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not have to involve using black hat methods!)
The focus of this series of articles is to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and marketing 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, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited resources, time, and budget.
So, instead of choosing this approach …
(Posting content to marketing channels one by one can be very time-consuming!)
Why not opt for a smarter, time-saving strategy like the one shown below 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 your content distribution to all other channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social sites and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content 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 of this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as shown in Part 2. Then, get it all configured as explained in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then connect all of the dots using plugins such as the ones listed in the following section.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at a few traffic-generating WordPress plugins that can:
- Distribute content to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically via RSS to other web properties
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, 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 functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part 3 …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
You can share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Share your content automatically on various social media networks.)
After all account and plugin settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings displays in your Publish box.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it will be automatically distributed online.)
For more information about the benefits of using this great plugin, go here: Jetpack by WordPress.com
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting system lets your visitors interact with your site, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions as part of an online community.
You can expand the WordPress built-in commenting feature using 3rd-party commenting plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments with social media, helping to spread and share your content around.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can improve user engagement on your web site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like ability to use keywords in the user name, the ability to add twitter names to comments, social enticements for content sharing, and SEO backlinks. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they enter their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can include with their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website.)
Go here to learn more about this plugin:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – Content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social LinkMachine is a WordPress plugin that allows you to automatically drip-feed content, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – drip-feed content automatically to over 30 social platforms)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to many online platforms, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Folkd, Kippt, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Rebel Mouse, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
For more details about using this great plugin, visit the plugin website: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get useful information about your content distribution efforts), or to learn more about social media tracking tools that will help you identify new trends and opportunities, track competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that could affect your business,etc, refer to this article:
The above are just some 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 Automation System: Automated Content Sharing Stage – Summary
Once you have your website or blog and plugins set up and expertly configured, all you need to do to attract traffic is add great content on a regular basis.
We have created an entire email course aimed at helping you come up with endless content ideas for your web site:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is addressed in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read the rest of this article series, click here:
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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