Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive visitors automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS.
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 to automatically drive more web traffic is post new content on a consistent basis!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase of this blueprint. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing website was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In Part Three, we discuss configuring the system.
Here, we configure all the settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure all the settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, we will look at ways to automate your traffic with different plugins.
Why You Should Automate The Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which online marketing gurus you get your advice from, you could find yourself trying to spend an hour a day (or more) promoting your business on social media.
Most businesses lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts prescribe. If you spend all of your time posting updates on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn in addition to writing articles for your blog or website, how can anything else in your business get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many businesses spend most of their working hours trying to keep their businesses up and running. On top of this, 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:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent around 6 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 research was done today, the figures would probably be higher.
- More than half of all businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more to create 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. Source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend more time marketing and promoting themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, marketing budgets, and time and many areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on a number of social media websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These companies can make decisions that can significantly affect your business without prior warning. Why invest so much effort and time building content on someone else’s asset? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own real estate and post your content automatically to other sites.
Investing in business automation to leverage time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increased availability of hundreds of new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited marketing budgets, resources, and time. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels do you focus more of your budget, time, and 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 neglecting the benefits of building content on your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that allows you to automate your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should invest more efforts, time, and your budget 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 urge you to avoid using black hat software, websites, methods, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of sites like Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not require the use of black hat methods!)
What we are focusing here is not to manipulate web services or flaunt 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 frequented by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, most small business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to individual channels is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose this time-saving 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 the distribution of your content to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media services and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress website or blog as described in Part 2. Then, get everything configured as explained in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you can then automate the process using plugins like the ones listed in the section below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a look now at some traffic-generating plugins that can be used to:
- Syndicate content to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Post 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 Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn 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 great 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 the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts automatically on several social media networks.)
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 details show in your Publish box.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically be shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it will be automatically syndicated online.)
This is a hands-free way to create more exposure for your content online on social media websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress commenting function lets your site users engage with your website or blog, post comments, reply to other users and engage with your content as part of a social community.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature with a 3rd-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can create more user engagement on your website or blog. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like the ability to add twitter usernames to comments, ability to use keywords in the name, SEO backlinks, and social enticements for sharing content. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can include with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv can attract more comments and traffic and improve user engagement on your website.)
To learn more about using this WordPress plugin, visit the plugin site:
Social Link Machine
(Social LinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget plugin that lets you drip-feed content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – drip-feed your content automatically to over 30 traffic-generating sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to many authority websites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Kippt, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
Go here to learn more about the benefits of this plugin: 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 distribution campaigns), we have created a comprehensive article listing several social media tracking tools and technologies that you may want to check out. More information:
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 Automation System: Automated Content Distribution Phase – Summary
Once your website and plugins have been set up and configured, all you then need to do to automatically generate web traffic is add great content on a consistent basis.
We have created a complete email training series designed to help you never run out of great content ideas for posting to your web site:
Once you have expertly 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 article in the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read more, click here:
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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