Welcome to Part Four of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to turn a website into an automated web traffic machine using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part One of this article series, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to begin attracting web traffic is add web content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we focus on the configuration phase of the blueprint.
Here, we configure all the settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 you will configure all the settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this step, we will show you how to set up various plugins that can bring web traffic automatically to your website when you begin to add content.
Why Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on which expert you get your advice from, you could find yourself spending 1-2 hours or more per day posting content on social media.
Most small business owners simply lack the time, resources and budget to employ the services of a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts prescribe. If you were to spend all of your time checking Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing articles for your website or blog, how would anything in your business ever get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their time just keeping their businesses up and running. Source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their working hours simply keeping 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 done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent at least six 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 research was done today, the figures would probably be 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 was their most time-consuming online activity.
(Small businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend more time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other equally important areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, marketing budget, and time and many different areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. These companies can make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without prior warning. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own real estate and post your content automatically to other online accounts.
Automating business processes to leverage time is not new. Businesses have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increasing availability of hundreds of new channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited time, marketing budgets, and resources. For example:
- Which marketing channels should 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. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that lets you automate the traffic generation with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more of your budget, time, and your efforts on,
- Invest most of your time and 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 solutions, strategies, websites, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the terms of service and policies of services like Google, Facebook, YouTube, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t require the use of black hat techniques!)
The purpose 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 get additional exposure online from websites that your target audience frequents.
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 recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited resources, budget, and time.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels individually 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 content one-time, and automate the distribution of your content to all other services.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social channels and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content automatically to other blogs and web 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your site as shown in Part Two. Then, get it all configured as described in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then connect all of the dots using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at a number of plugins that can:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content to other websites via RSS feeds
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+, LinkedIn and more as soon as you publish your content using a WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many useful features.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Publicize your content to various social networks.)
After configuring all of the plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings appear in the publishing area.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they are automatically distributed online.)
Go here to learn more about this handy plugin: Jetpack by WordPress.com
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting feature that allows your visitors to engage with your website or blog, post comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature using a third-party commenting plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates with social media, helping to spread and share them around.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can improve user engagement on your website. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like social enticements for sharing content, using keywords in the username, the ability to add twitter handles to comments, and backlinks. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they are typing their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included below their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can help attract more comments and improve user engagement on your web site.)
For more details about using this plugin, visit the plugin site:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin that allows you to syndicate and drip-feed content to dozens of authority websites, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – drip-feed your content automatically to dozens of traffic-generating sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to many authority sites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Delicious, Linkagogo, Kippt, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
To learn more about the benefits of using this handy plugin, visit the plugin site: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get actionable information about your content marketing campaigns), we have written a detailed article on social media monitoring tools that will help you keep track of online trends, monitor competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that can affect your business, etc, see what conversations are taking place online that could affect your business,etc. For more info, see this article:
The above are just a few 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 System: Content Syndication Process – Summary
Once you have your site and plugins set up and expertly configured, all you need to do to automatically begin attracting more web traffic is post fresh content on a regular basis.
We have created a complete email email-based training course designed to help you never run out of great content ideas for your site:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as you can. This step is explained in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read more, click on the link below:
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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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