Welcome to Part Four of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part One of this series, we provide an overview of the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is post fresh content regularly to start generating new web traffic!)
In Part Two, we discussed 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 using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In Part Three, we look at the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three we explain how to configure all the settings that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, we will show you how to set up various WordPress plugins that can bring web traffic automatically to your website whenever you begin publishing content regularly.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which marketing experts you talk to, you could find yourself trying to spend an hour a day (or more) promoting your business on social media.
Many businesses simply lack the time, resources and financial means to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts advise. If you were to spend half a day posting updates on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn in addition to planning and writing articles for your blog or website, how would anything in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Image source: NFIB)
Many 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.
A study of small businesses done in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent at least 6 hours each week on social media (the other half 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 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.
(Small businesses are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend more time marketing and promoting themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to focus their time on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budgets, time, and resources and many business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time 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 YouTube. These companies can and will make decisions that can significantly impact your business without prior notification. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own real estate and post your content automatically to other sites.
Investing in business automation to save time is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited resources, time, and marketing budgets. For example:
- Which channels do you focus more of your time, budget, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, 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 The Traffic Generation With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy for automating your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this formula, 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 online marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should focus more of your efforts, budget, and time on,
- Invest most of your 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 strongly urge you to avoid using black hat solutions, methods, sites, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the terms of service and policies of services like Pinterest, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not have to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
The focus of this article is to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and marketing efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites 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 advise. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited time, resources, and budget.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to services one at a time can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose a smarter, time-saving approach 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 one-time, and automate your content distribution to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media channels and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) to other blogs and web 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 get all this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as explained in Part Two. Then, get it all configured as shown in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then connect all of the dots with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a few traffic-generating plugins that can be used to:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content to other blogs via RSS feeds
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn and more as soon as you publish new content using a WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with loads of great functions.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (which you would have set up in Part 3.) …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
Configure this section to share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your content automatically to various social media networks.)
After all account and plugin settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details displayed in the Publish box.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they will be automatically syndicated online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides you with an automated and hands-free way to create more exposure online for your content on social sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting function lets your visitors interact with your website or blog, post new comments, reply to other users and engage with your content.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature with 3rd-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments with social media, helping to spread and share your content 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 ability to use keywords in the name, backlinks, adding twitter handles to comments, and social enticements for sharing your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they type their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can include with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv Premium version can help attract more comments and web traffic and create more user engagement on your web site.)
Visit this website to learn more about this powerful plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – Content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin that lets you syndicate your content to dozens of authority websites, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed content automatically to over 30 social websites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to over 30 online websites, such as:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Diigo, Instapaper, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
Visit the plugin site to learn more about this plugin: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get actionable information about your content marketing campaigns), go here to learn about social media tracking tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives:
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: Content Sharing Stage – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do to start generating new traffic is add fresh content consistently.
We have created a complete email course designed to help you come up with unlimited content for your site:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is covered in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read the rest of this article, click here:
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
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