Welcome to Part 4 of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic generating machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part 1 of this article series, we explain 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 attract web traffic is add web content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we focus on critical setup decisions. We help you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In Part Three, we focus on the configuration phase of the blueprint.
Here, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure all the settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, we look at ways to automate traffic to your website with different plugins.
Why Automate The Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which expert you talk to, you could find yourself trying to spend an hour or two (or more) per day posting content on social media.
Many small business owners simply lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise. If you were to spend hours checking Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter in addition to planning and writing content for your blog or website, how would you get anything in your business done?
(Keeping a business up and running is how most small business owners spend their working hours. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many businesses spend most of their time 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 grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent around 6 hours per 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 usage of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was done today, the numbers would most likely be even 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 was the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Small businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time marketing and promoting themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and marketing budgets 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 promoting and marketing your business on a number of social media sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These sites can and will make decisions that can significantly affect your business without prior notification. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can control your own real estate and post your content automatically to other sites.
Automating processes to leverage time is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited time, resources, and marketing budgets. For example:
- Which channels do you invest more of your time, budget, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not control (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Web Traffic Generation With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method for automating your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this strategy, 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 time, efforts, and your budget on,
- Invest most of your 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 strongly urge you to avoid using black hat techniques, tools, sites, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of services like Twitter, Facebook, Google.
(Automating your web traffic does not require the use of black hat methods!)
The purpose of this article series is to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and efforts, and increase your exposure online to websites used by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that most small business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts advise. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of using this approach …
(Posting content to marketing channels one by one 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 one-time, and automate the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites and social 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 shown in Part 2. Then, get everything configured as explained in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then automate these processes with plugins such as the ones listed below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at a few traffic-generation plugins that can help:
- Post content to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically to other blogs via RSS feeds
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, 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 installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part 3 …
(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, Tumblr, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Distribute your posts automatically to various social media accounts.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account options show in your post publishing section.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they are automatically distributed online.)
Jetpack provides you with a hands-free way to create more exposure for your content online on social sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress built-in commenting function lets your blog readers engage with your site, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions as part of a community.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature with a third-party plugin that integrates with social media, helping to spread and share your content online.
For example, a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they like, tweet, or +1 your post. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they are entering their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which can be included with their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your web site.)
To learn more about the benefits of this plugin, go here:
Social LinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that lets you drip-feed your content to many authority sites, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate content automatically to many authority sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to dozens of authority platforms, such as:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Folkd, Kippt, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Overblog, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
To learn more about using this plugin, visit this site: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get actionable information about your content distribution campaigns), go here to learn about social media measurement tools that will help you identify new business opportunities, track competitor activity, see what online conversations are taking place that can affect your business,etc:
The above are just some 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 System: Content Sharing Stage – Summary
Once your site and plugins have been configured and fully set up, all you then need to do to generate more web traffic is post content consistently.
If you need endless content ideas for your web site, then subscribe to our FREE email training series on content marketing here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is explained in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Part 4
To read more, click here:
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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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