Welcome to Part Four 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 One of this article series, we provided an overview of the traffic automation process, and explained 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 is post web content on a consistent basis to start generating web traffic!)
In Part 2, we focus on the setup phase. We explain 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 is built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we focus on the configuration phase of the automation blueprint.
Here, we configure all the settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 we show you how to configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part 4, we look at ways to automate the traffic system using a number of plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate The Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which marketing gurus you listen to, you could find yourself trying to spend 1-2 hours every day (or more) promoting your business on social media while also trying to manage your business, your content and your online presence.
Most businesses simply 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 online marketing experts are recommending. If you are spending half your day checking LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook in addition to planning and writing content for your blog or website, how can anything else in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours just keeping their businesses up and running. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their time just 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 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 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 conducted today, the numbers would most likely be significantly 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 each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of 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 areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budget, resources, and time and many business areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on a number of social websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. These companies can and will make decisions that impact your business without prior notification. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on someone else’s asset? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other sites.
Automating business systems and processes to save time is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increasing availability of so many new channels for promoting and marketing a business online creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited resources, time, and budget. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels should you focus 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. YouTube, LinkedIn, Tumblr, 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 Web Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that allows you to automate the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more efforts, budget, and your time on,
- Invest most of your time and 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 urge you to avoid using black hat strategies, tools, sites, and anything designed to “game” or violate the policies and terms of service of companies like Facebook, YouTube, Google, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not have to involve using black hat methods!)
The purpose of this series of articles is to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and increase your exposure online to websites frequented by your target audience.
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 financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts recommend. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited resources, time, and budget.
So, instead of posting content to services one by one, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to services one by one is 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 services and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content automatically 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your site as explained in Part 2. Then, expertly configure things as explained in Part 3. After all this is in place, you can then connect all of the dots with 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 Traffic System – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a number of traffic-generation plugins that can be used to:
- Distribute content to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content to other websites via RSS feeds
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 new content using a plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many great features.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (set up in Part Three.) …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your content on several social networks.)
After all plugin and account settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details show in the post publishing area.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it is automatically distributed online.)
This is a hands-free way to get more exposure online for your content on social media networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress native commenting feature lets your visitors engage with your web site, post new comments, reply to other users and engage with your content.
You can expand the WordPress built-in commenting feature with a 3rd-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates with social media, helping to spread and share them online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they like, tweet, or plus1 your post. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they type their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included below their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can attract more comments and improve user engagement on your website or blog.)
To learn more about this plugin, visit this site:
Social LinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social LinkMachine is a WordPress plugin that lets you automatically drip-feed content, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate your content to many online sites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to over 30 authority sites, like:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Kippt, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Overblog, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
Visit the plugin website for more details about the benefits of using this plugin: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get useful information about your content marketing campaigns), we have created a comprehensive article where we explore several social media tracking tools that are worth knowing about. For more details, go 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 System: Content Syndication Stage – Summary
Once your website and plugins have been set up and configured, all you then have to do to automatically begin bringing more traffic is add content on a consistent basis.
We have created an entire email course aimed at helping you come up with limitless content 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 covered in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Four
To continue reading, click here:
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