Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to automatically start generating more traffic is add web content on a regular basis!)
In Part Two, we focus on the setup phase of the traffic automation blueprint. We explain the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we looked at the configuration phase of this process.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three we explain how to configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part 4, we discuss ways to automate traffic generation using various WordPress plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which marketing gurus you listen to, you could find yourself trying to spend a couple of hours every day (or more) posting content on social media, as well as trying to run your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Most small businesses lack the time, human 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 recommend. If you spent hours posting updates on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook in addition to planning and writing content for your website or blog, how would anything else in your business get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their working hours simply keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
A study of small businesses done in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent six or more hours each 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 research was conducted today, the figures would most likely be even higher.
- More than half of all businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more creating 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. Infographic source: VerticalResponse)
As small 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 time, marketing budget, and resources and many areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on a number of social sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or StumbleUpon. These sites often will make decisions that affect your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much effort and time building content on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other websites.
Automating systems and process to leverage time is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increasing availability of so many new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited resources, time, and budgets. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you focus more of your efforts, budget, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not own (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Web Traffic Generation With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method for automating your traffic-getting 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 online marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should invest more of your efforts, budget, and time on,
- Invest most of your efforts building your own asset instead of someone else’s 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 recommend avoiding black hat techniques, websites, tools, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the terms of service and policies of sites like Pinterest, Facebook, Google.
(Automating your web traffic does not need to involve the use of black hat methods!)
The focus of this article is not to manipulate web services or flaunt their terms of service, but 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 frequented by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that many business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited resources, time, and budget.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different services one by one can be 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 your content distribution to all other channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social sites and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content 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 website or blog as explained in Part 2. Then, configure everything as shown in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you then automate the content distribution with plugins.
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 brief look at some examples of traffic-generating plugins that can help to:
- Post content to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content to other sites via RSS feeds
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ 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 useful features.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part 3 …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
Configure this section to share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Distribute your content to several social media accounts.)
After all settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings appear in the publishing area.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically be shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new posts will be automatically shared online.)
Visit the plugin site to learn more about this great plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting function that allows your visitors to engage with your site, post new comments, reply to other users and engage with your content.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature using a 3rd-party plugin that integrates your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can create more user engagement on your web site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like the ability to add twitter handles to comments, backlinks, using keywords in the user name, and social enticements for sharing your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they type their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can choose to include below their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website.)
For more details about using this powerful plugin, visit the plugin website:
Social LinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a plugin for WordPress that allows you to automatically syndicate your content, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate your content automatically to many online sites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to dozens of authority websites, like:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Kippt, Zotero, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about this great plugin, go here: Social Link Machine
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), we have written a comprehensive article where we explore a number of social media measurement tools that will help you keep track of online trends, monitor competitor activity, see what online conversations are taking place that could affect your business, etc, see what online conversations are taking place that could affect your business,etc. More info:
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: Automated Content Distribution Process – Summary
Once your site and plugins have been set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do is add content regularly to automatically begin attracting new web traffic organically.
If you need endless content ideas for your site, we recommend subscribing to our email training series on content marketing here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is addressed in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Section 4
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