Welcome to Part 4 of our WordPress 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 series:
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is post content consistently to automatically start generating traffic!)
In Part Two, we look at the setup phase. 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 website is built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In Part 3, we discuss the configuration phase of the automation blueprint.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you will configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In this article, we will look at ways to automate the traffic system using various WordPress plugins.
Why Automating The Traffic Generation Makes Sense
Depending on which marketing gurus you talk to, you could end up trying to spend a couple of hours or more per day posting content on social media.
Most small businesses lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are recommending. If you are spending hours checking LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook in addition to planning and writing content for your website or blog, how does anything in your business get done?
(Keeping a business up and running is how most small business owners spend their time. Infographic: NFIB)
Small business owners spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
Research conducted by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent around 6 hours per week on social media (most of the other businesses surveyed using 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 conducted today, the figures would probably 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 each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time promoting and marketing themselves online in order to compete and survive, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, marketing budgets, and time and many business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on various social media sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. These sites can make decisions that can significantly affect your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on someone else’s asset? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can have complete control of your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other sites.
Automating business processes to leverage time is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increased availability of so many new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited resources, time, and budgets. For example:
- Which of these channels do you invest more time, budget, and 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 neglecting your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method for automating your web traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more of your efforts, budget, and your time on,
- Invest most of your time 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 websites, tools, strategies, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the policies and terms of service of companies like Twitter, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not have to involve the use of black hat methods!)
The purpose of this article is to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites frequented 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 online experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limited resources, budget, and time.
So, instead of posting content to different marketing channels individually, which can be extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels can be very time-consuming!)
Why not do this 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 once, and automate the distribution of your content to all other services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media services and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) automatically to other blogs and web 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as shown in Part Two. Then, expertly configure everything as explained in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then automate your content distribution with plugins such as the ones listed in the next section.
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 look now at some traffic-generating WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically to other blogs via RSS feeds
Jetpack by WordPress.com
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus and more as soon as you publish your content using a WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many great features.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part Three …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize feature)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Distribute your posts automatically to several social media sites.)
After configuring all plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings in your post publishing area.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically be shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your posts are automatically shared online.)
Visit the plugin website to learn more about this plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting feature allows your blog readers to interact with your web site, post new comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions as part of a social community.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature with a third-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can improve user engagement on your website. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like search-indexable backlinks, social enticements for sharing content, the ability to add twitter usernames to comments, and ability to use keywords in the name. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they are typing their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and improve user engagement on your web site.)
Go here to learn more about this great plugin:
Social Link Machine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a WordPress plugin that allows you to automatically drip-feed content, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate your content to over 30 online websites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to many authority platforms, including:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Instapaper, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Overblog, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, go here: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get actionable information about your content distribution campaigns), we have created a comprehensive article where we explore a number of social media monitoring tools and technologies that will help you identify new business opportunities, track competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that affect your business,etc. Go here for more information:
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 Blueprint: Automated Content Sharing Stage – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do is add great content consistently to start generating more traffic.
We have created a complete email email-based training course designed to help you come up with endless content for your website:
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 addressed in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read more, click on the link below:
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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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