Welcome to Part Four of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to create an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part 1 of this series, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to attract more web traffic is publish web content consistently!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your website was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In Part 3, we focus on important configuration decisions.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 we show you how to configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this step, we explain how to set up various plugins that can help drive traffic automatically to your site.
Why You Should Consider Automating The Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which marketing gurus you talk to, you could end up spending a couple of hours every day (or more) posting content on social media.
Most business owners simply lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are recommending. If you are spending hours checking Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook in addition to planning and writing articles for your website or blog, how can anything in your business get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. Source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow 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 six or more 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 consumed the most time online.
(Small businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend more time promoting and marketing themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to prioritize their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and marketing budgets and many business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social media websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or StumbleUpon. These companies often will make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on someone else’s real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can control your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Investing in automation to leverage time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increasing availability of hundreds of new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited marketing budget, time, and resources. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you focus more efforts, time, and budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting 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-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that allows you to automate your traffic generation with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more of your time, efforts, and budget on,
- Invest most of your time 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 recommend avoiding black hat websites, techniques, software, and anything designed to “game” or violate the terms of service and policies of companies like Facebook, Pinterest, Google, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t require the use of black hat methods!)
The purpose of this article series is to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and increase your exposure online to sites used by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen in the previous section that most small businesses lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limited time, resources, and budget.
So, instead of using this time-consuming approach …
(Posting content to individual channels 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 your content distribution to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social channels and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) 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 site as explained in Part 2. Then, get it configured as described in Part 3. After all this is in place, you can 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 Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some examples of plugins that can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically via RSS feeds to other online properties
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ 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, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (set up in Part 3.) …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack – Publicize)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Publicize your posts to several social media networks.)
After all of the plugin and account settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account options in the Publish section.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they are automatically shared online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides an automated and hands-free way to create more exposure online for your content on social sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress native commenting function allows your visitors to interact with your website, post comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions as part of a social community.
You can expand the WordPress built-in commenting feature using 3rd-party commenting plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share your content around.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they tweet, +1, or like your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they type their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can include with their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your web site.)
To learn more about this plugin, visit the plugin website:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget plugin that lets you syndicate and drip-feed content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – drip-feed your content automatically to many authority websites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to dozens of social websites, like:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Diigo, Plurk, Reddit, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Sett, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
Go here to learn more about this plugin: 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 listing over 30 social media measurement tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives. To learn more, 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 Distribution Process – Summary
Once your site and plugins have been configured and fully set up, all you need to do to start generating new traffic is add new content consistently.
We have created a complete email series designed to help you never run out of content for your site:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as can be improved. This step is addressed in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Part Four
To continue reading, click here:
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