Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part One of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is post web content regularly to automatically begin attracting new traffic!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase of the automation blueprint. We helped 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 site was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In Part Three, we discuss the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you will configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section, we will discuss ways to automate traffic generation with different plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which business marketing expert you talk to, you could end up trying to spend an hour each day (or more) posting content on social media while also trying to manage your business, your content and your web presence.
Most small businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts recommend doing. If you spent all of your time posting updates on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter in addition to writing content for your website or blog, how would you get anything else in your business done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small business owners spend their time. Image source: NFIB)
Small businesses spend most of their working hours simply keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay 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 small 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 use of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was done today, the figures would most likely 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 was the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend more time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and budgets and many areas to focus on need 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 have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. These companies often will make decisions that can significantly affect your business without prior notification. Why invest so much effort and time building content on someone else’s asset? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other sites.
Automating processes to leverage time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increased availability of hundreds of new channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited budgets, resources, and time. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels should you invest 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, LinkedIn, Tumblr, 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 The Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that lets you automate the traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this formula, 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 costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more efforts, budget, and your time on,
- Invest most of your time and 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 strongly urge that you stay away from all black hat strategies, sites, tools, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the policies and terms of service of services like Facebook, YouTube, Google, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not require using black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this article is not to game online 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 sites 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, most business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of using this time-consuming approach …
(Posting content to different services one at a time is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not use this strategy 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 your content distribution to all other channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media channels 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as explained in Part Two. Then, configure everything as shown in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then automate your content distribution with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at some examples of WordPress plugins that can help:
- Syndicate content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically to other blogs via RSS feeds
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, GooglePlus and more as soon as you publish your content using a plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with loads of useful functions.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack – Publicize)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Share your content on various social accounts.)
After configuring all of the account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings show in the publishing section.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it will be automatically syndicated online.)
To learn more about the benefits of this great plugin, visit this website: Jetpack Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting system allows your blog readers to engage with your website, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature using third-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, using a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like using keywords in the name, the ability to add twitter usernames to comments, search-indexable backlinks, and social enticements for content sharing. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog 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 can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your website.)
To learn more about this plugin, visit the plugin site:
Social Link Machine
(Social LinkMachine – Content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget plugin that allows you to automatically syndicate content, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate and drip-feed content to dozens of social platforms)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to over 30 authority platforms, including:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Linkagogo, Kippt, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Sett, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, go here: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get actionable information about your content marketing campaigns), we have written a comprehensive article listing several social media monitoring tools and technologies that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns. More information:
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 Blueprint: Content Distribution Stage – Summary
Once your site and plugins have been expertly configured and set up, all you then have to do is post new content on a consistent basis to generate more traffic organically.
We have created a complete email email-based training course aimed at helping you come up with endless content for posting to your website:
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 series.
This is the end of Part Four
To continue reading about this topic, click on the link below:
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