Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your site into an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part One of this article series, we provide an overview of the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to bring traffic is add content consistently!)
In Part Two, we focus on the setup phase of this blueprint. We help you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing site is built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In Part Three, we discuss the configuration phase.
Here, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 you will configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, we will show you how to set up various plugins that can help get traffic automatically to your site when you begin to publish content.
Why Automate The Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on who you listen to, you could end up spending a couple of hours or more each day promoting your business on social media.
Many business owners lack the time, resources and budget to run a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise. If you were to spend half a day checking LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter in addition to writing content for your blog or website, how would anything else in your business ever get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. Source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their time just keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and make sales in order to survive.
Marketing research done by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent at least six hours per week on social media (the rest 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 most likely be significantly higher.
- More than half of all small businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more to create a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media was their most time-consuming online activity.
(Small businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small 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 marketing budgets, resources, and time and many different areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other important 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 Facebook, Twitter, or StumbleUpon. These companies can make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort 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 online properties.
Automating business processes to save time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increasing availability of many new channels for promoting and marketing a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited budget, resources, and time. For example:
- Which channels should you focus more of your budget, time, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that belong to other people (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring the benefits of building content on your own website?
- 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 we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula for automating your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more of your 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 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 recommend avoiding black hat software, techniques, websites, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the policies and terms of service of sites like Google, Facebook, Pinterest, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not require the use of black hat techniques!)
The focus of this article series is to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and increase your exposure online to websites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that many 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 be strategic with your limited time, budget, and resources.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to different marketing channels individually can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose this one 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 services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social services and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content 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 WordPress website or blog as described in Part 2. Then, get everything configured as explained in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you can then connect all of the dots with plugins like the ones discussed in the following section.
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 look now at some examples of traffic-generation plugins that can:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content to other websites via RSS
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ 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 features.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part 3 …
(Connect Jetpack 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 Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your content to several social media networks.)
After all plugin and account settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings show in your post publishing section.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they will be automatically syndicated online.)
Jetpack provides you with an automated and hands-free way to create more exposure for your content online on social media networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting function allows your site users to interact with your website, post comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions as part of an online community.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature with third-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments with social media, helping to spread and share your content around.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your web site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like adding twitter handles to comments, ability to use keywords in the name, backlinks, and social enticements for sharing content. 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 after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv Premium version can help attract more comments and visitors and create more user engagement on your web site.)
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, visit this site:
Social Link Machine
(Social Link Machine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin that allows you to automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to dozens of online sites, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate and drip-feed content automatically to dozens of authority platforms)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to dozens of online websites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Kippt, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
Visit the plugin site to learn more about using this powerful plugin: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get useful information about your content marketing campaigns), we have written a detailed article about social media tracking tools and technologies that you may want to check out. To learn more about this go here:
The above are just some examples of the many content distribution plugins that WordPress makes available.
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 System: Content Syndication Phase – Summary
Once you have your website or blog and plugins set up and expertly configured, all you have to do to automatically begin bringing new web traffic is publish web content regularly.
We have created a complete email series aimed at helping you come up with endless content ideas for posting to your web site:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is explained in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read the rest of this article, click here:
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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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