Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your website into an automated web traffic generating machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part 1 of this series, we explained 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 to automatically generate more web traffic is publish fresh content on a regular basis!)
In Part Two, we focused on critical setup decisions. 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 site, and what to do if your website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part Three, we focused on important configuration decisions.
In this step, we configure all the settings that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 we show you how to configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part 4, we look at ways to automate traffic to your website using various plugins.
Why Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on which experts you get your advice from, you could end up trying to spend an hour each day (or more) promoting your business on social media.
Most small business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise doing. If you were to spend hours posting updates on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn in addition to writing content for your blog or website, how would you get anything else in your business done?
(Keeping their business up and running is how most small business owners spend their working hours. Source: NFIB)
Small business owners spend most of their working hours trying to keep 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.
Research conducted in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent at least six 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 research was conducted today, the numbers 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 was the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Small businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time marketing and promoting themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to focus their time on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budget, resources, and time and many business 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 websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. These sites often will make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without prior notification. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other sites.
Investing in business automation to leverage time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth channels for promoting and marketing a business creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited resources, time, and budgets. For example:
- Which of these channels do you focus more efforts, budget, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that belong to other businesses (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy for automating your web traffic generation with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content 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 budget, efforts, and your time 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 staying away from all black hat tools, methods, websites, and anything designed to “game” or violate the policies and terms of service of companies like Twitter, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t need to involve using black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this series of articles is not to manipulate online services or bypass their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites visited by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen in the previous section how most business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of posting content to each marketing channel, which is extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to different channels can be very time-consuming!)
Why not use this time-saving approach 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 once, and automate the distribution of your content to all other services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media channels and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content to other blogs and online 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 described in Part Two. Then, configure everything as shown in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then automate these processes with plugins like the ones listed below.
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 WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Syndicate content to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically to other web properties via RSS feeds
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, GooglePlus, 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 loads of useful features.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part Three …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Configure this section to share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts on various social media sites.)
After configuring all plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings displays in your publishing area.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically get shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it will be automatically shared online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides a hands-free, automated way to get more exposure online for your content on social media sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting function allows your blog readers to interact with your web site, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions as part of a community.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature using third-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share them around.
For example, a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they +1, tweet, or like your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they are typing their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can choose to include at the bottom of their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and web traffic and improve user engagement on your website or blog.)
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, visit this site:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that lets you automatically syndicate your content, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed your content automatically to many social sites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to dozens of social sites, including:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Folkd, Plurk, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about the benefits of using this WordPress plugin, go here: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get actionable information about your content distribution efforts), we have created a detailed article listing many social media measurement tools that are worth checking out and knowing about. More information:
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 System: Automated Content Sharing Stage – Summary
Once you have your site and plugins set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then is add web content regularly to automatically bring traffic.
If you need great content ideas for your website or blog, we recommend subscribing to our FREE 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 series.
This is the end of Section Four
To keep reading, click on the link below:
***
"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)
***