Welcome to Part Four of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to create an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part 1 of this article series, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is publish new content regularly to drive traffic!)
In Part 2, we focus on critical setup decisions. We explain the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your site is built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we looked at the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you will configure all the settings that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this article, we will look at ways to automate traffic to your website using various plugins.
Why You Should Consider Automating The Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on who you get your advice from, you could end up investing an hour or two (or more) every day posting content on social media, as well as running your business, creating content and managing your online presence.
Most businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are recommending. If you spent hours checking Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter in addition to researching and writing articles for your blog or website, how would anything in your business ever get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours just keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: NFIB)
Small business owners spend most of their working hours just keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
Marketing research done by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent at least six hours each week on social media (the rest spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This use of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was done today, the figures 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 every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend more time promoting and marketing themselves online in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to focus their time on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and budgets and many areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or StumbleUpon. These companies can 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, you can have complete control of your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other online accounts.
Automating systems and process to leverage time is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the availability of many new channels for marketing and promoting a business creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited marketing budgets, time, and resources. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels should you focus more of your budget, time, and your efforts 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 the benefits of building content on 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 I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that allows you to automate the traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this method, 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 channels you should focus more of your efforts, budget, and time on,
- Invest most of your 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 urge you to avoid using black hat tools, methods, websites, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of companies like Facebook, YouTube, Google, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not need to involve using black hat techniques!)
The focus of this article is not to game web services or break 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 websites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, many small business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to individual marketing channels can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose this one 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 services and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content automatically 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as described in Part 2. Then, expertly configure it as shown in Part 3. After all this is in place, you then automate the content distribution using plugins like 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 Generation Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some examples of traffic-generating plugins that can help to:
- Syndicate content to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically to other online properties via RSS feeds
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, GooglePlus 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 great functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Distribute your content automatically to various social accounts.)
After all account and plugin settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings appear in your publishing box.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it is automatically shared online.)
Visit the plugin website to learn more about using this plugin: Jetpack WordPress Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting system that lets your blog readers engage with your site, post new comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature with a third-party commenting plugin that integrates your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your web site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like backlinks, adding twitter handles to comments, ability to use keywords in the user name, and social enticements for content sharing. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they are entering their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can include with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and web traffic and improve user engagement on your website or blog.)
Go here to learn more about using this handy plugin:
Social Link Machine
(Social LinkMachine – Content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that lets you automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to many traffic-generating websites, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – drip-feed your content to over 30 online websites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to many online sites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Linkagogo, Kippt, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
For more information about the benefits of using this powerful 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 marketing campaigns), we have created a comprehensive article where we explore many social media tracking tools that you may want to check out. See this page to learn more:
The above are just some examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating and syndicating 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 website or blog and plugins have been configured and set up, all you have to do then to automatically drive more web traffic is post content regularly.
If you need endless content ideas for your site, we recommend subscribing to our 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 explained in the next section of our WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Part Four
To continue reading, click on the link below:
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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