Welcome to Part Four of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part 1 of this article series, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to start attracting web traffic is post fresh content consistently!)
In Part Two, we look at the setup phase of the blueprint. 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 site, and what to do if your site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we focused on the configuration phase of the traffic automation system.
Here, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, you will learn how to set up various plugins that can help drive new traffic automatically to your website or blog.
Why Automating The Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on which experts you talk to, you could find yourself trying to spend 1-2 hours or more per day promoting your business on social media.
Many small businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts prescribe. If you spend hours checking LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook in addition to planning and writing articles for your blog or website, how will you get anything else in your business done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their time trying to keep 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 grow in order to survive.
Research conducted by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent six or more hours per week on social media (the rest 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 survey was done today, the figures 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 consumed the most time online.
(Small businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, marketing budget, and time and many business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on a number of social media websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or StumbleUpon. These companies often will make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without prior notification. Why invest so much effort and time building content on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can control your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other websites.
Automating business systems and processes to leverage time is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the availability of so many new channels for marketing and promoting a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited time, budgets, and resources. For example:
- Which channels do you focus more of your budget, time, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not own (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, 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 I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that allows you to automate your traffic generation with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more budget, time, and efforts 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 that you stay away from all black hat sites, methods, tools, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of sites like Google, Facebook, Pinterest, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t need to involve using black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this series of articles is not to game online services or break their terms of service, but to show you how to be smart with your limited resources and automate your content distribution so you can 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
We’ve just seen that most businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited time, budget, and resources.
So, instead of posting content to marketing channels one at a time, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to marketing channels individually is very time-consuming!)
Why not choose a smarter, time-saving strategy like the one shown below 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 channels and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content 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 it configured as shown in Part 3. After all this is in place, you can then connect all of the dots using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at some examples of traffic-generation plugins that can help:
- Distribute content to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically to other online properties via RSS
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn 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 loads of useful functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part Three …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
You can share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your content on various social media sites.)
After configuring all of the plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize options show in the post publishing box.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your post will be automatically shared online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides a hands-free way to get more exposure online for your content on social sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting system that lets your blog readers interact with your website, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions as part of an online community.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature using a third-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates with social media, helping to spread and share your content online.
For example, a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they plus1, tweet, or like your post. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they are entering their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can include with their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your site.)
To learn more about the benefits of using this powerful plugin, visit the plugin website:
Social LinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a plugin for WordPress that allows you to automatically syndicate your content to over 30 authority websites, build backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate and drip-feed content to dozens of traffic-generating sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to over 30 online sites, such as:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Plurk, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
Go here to learn more about the benefits of using this plugin: SocialLinkMachine
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 where we explore many social media tracking tools that you may want to check out. Go here to learn more:
The above are just some examples of the many content distribution plugins that are available to WordPress users.
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: Automated Content Distribution Stage – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do then is add great content on a regular basis to begin attracting web traffic organically.
If you need endless content ideas for your site, we recommend subscribing to our email training series here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as can be improved. This step is covered in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read the rest of this article series, click on the link below:
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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