Welcome to Part Four of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a website into an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part One, 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 web site, all you have to do is publish new content consistently to start generating new traffic!)
In Part 2, we look at the setup phase of this blueprint. We help you understand 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 website was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, 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 3 we explain how to configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, we will discuss ways to automate the traffic system using a number of plugins.
Why Automating The Traffic Generation Makes Sense
Depending on which marketing experts you listen to, you could end up spending an hour or two (or more) every day promoting your business on social media while also trying to run your business, creating content and managing your online presence.
Most business owners simply lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts recommend. If you are spending half your day checking LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter in addition to researching and writing articles for your blog or website, how does anything in your business get done?
(Keeping their business up and running is how most small business owners spend their working hours. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their working hours 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 make sales in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent at least six 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 use of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was conducted today, the numbers would probably be even higher.
- More than half of all small businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more creating a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media was their most time-consuming online activity.
(Businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to prioritize their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and marketing budgets and many different areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on various 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 StumbleUpon. These sites often will make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without prior notification. Why invest so much effort and time building content on someone else’s asset? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can have complete control of your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Automating systems and process to save time is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increasing availability of many new channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited resources, marketing budgets, and time. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels do you invest more of your budget, efforts, and your time 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 the benefits of building content on your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy for automating your traffic generation with WordPress.
With this method, 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 invest more of your time, budget, and your efforts on,
- Invest most of your time 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 you to avoid using black hat websites, solutions, techniques, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of sites like YouTube, Facebook, Google.
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t need to involve the use of black hat methods!)
The purpose of this series of articles is not to manipulate online services or flaunt their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and marketing 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, most business owners lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to individual marketing channels can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose this time-saving method 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 marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media sites and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) automatically 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 website or blog as explained in Part 2. Then, expertly configure things as explained in Part 3. After all this is in place, you 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 Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a few plugins that can help:
- Distribute content to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically via RSS feeds to other sites
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus and more as soon as you publish new content using a WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many useful functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part Three …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your content automatically on several social media sites.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings in your publishing section.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it is automatically shared online.)
To learn more about the benefits of this WordPress plugin, go here: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting system that allows your visitors to engage with your web site, post new comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature using 3rd-party commenting plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share them online.
For example, using a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they tweet, like, or plus1 your content. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they are typing their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which can be included with their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your site.)
Visit this site to learn more about this great plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
SocialLinkMachine is a plugin that lets you automatically syndicate your content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate and drip-feed content to dozens of online platforms)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to dozens of authority sites, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Linkagogo, Instapaper, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
Go here to learn more about using this powerful plugin: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get useful information about your content marketing efforts), we have created a detailed article listing many social media measurement tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives. For more details, go here:
The above are just some examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating 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: Automated Content Distribution Process – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site and plugins configured and set up, all you then need to do to start generating new traffic is publish content on a consistent basis.
If you need endless topics for content that you can post on your web site, we recommend subscribing to our FREE email training series here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as you can. This step is explained in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read the rest of this article series, click here:
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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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