Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your site into an automated web traffic generation machine using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part One, we described the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to begin attracting traffic is post content regularly!)
In Part 2, we focus on critical setup decisions. We explain 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 existing website is built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part Three, we discussed configuring the system.
In this step, we configure all the settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 we show you how to configure all the settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, we discuss ways to automate your traffic with different WordPress plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate The Traffic Generation
Depending on which marketing gurus you get your advice from, you could find yourself spending an hour or two every day (or more) promoting your business on social media in addition to running your business, creating content and managing your online presence.
Many small business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts recommend. If you spend hours posting updates on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter in addition to researching and writing articles for your website or blog, how can anything else in your business get done?
(Keeping a business running is how most small businesses spend their working hours. Image source: NFIB)
Many businesses spend most of their time trying to keep 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.
Marketing research conducted in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent 6 or more hours each 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 most likely be significantly 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.
(Businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time promoting and marketing themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to focus their time on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and budgets and many different business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time 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 YouTube. These companies can and will make decisions that can significantly impact your business without requiring your input. 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 systems and process to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increased availability of so many new channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited resources, time, and marketing budgets. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you invest more 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. Facebook, LinkedIn, 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 The Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula for automating the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should focus more of your budget, efforts, and time on,
- Invest most of your time and 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 recommend avoiding black hat websites, techniques, tools, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of services like Twitter, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not require using black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this article 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 sites 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, human 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 limitations.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to individual channels is very time-consuming!)
Why not choose a smarter, time-saving approach like 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 your content distribution to all other channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media services and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content 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 WordPress website or blog as described in Part Two. Then, expertly configure things as described in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then connect all of the dots with plugins such as the ones discussed below.
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 quick look at a number of plugins that can be used to:
- Distribute content to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content via RSS to other websites
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, 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 many useful features.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part 3 …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Share your content automatically on various social media networks.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account details appear in your Publish box.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they are automatically shared online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides you with an automated and hands-free way to get more exposure online for your content on social media websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting function that lets your site users engage with your site, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature using 3rd-party commenting plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can create more user engagement on your site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like the ability to add twitter handles to comments, using keywords in the username, social enticements for content sharing, and search-indexable backlinks. This plugin will visit the website 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 Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your web site.)
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, go here:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that lets you syndicate and drip-feed content, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate and drip-feed your content automatically to dozens of authority platforms)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to many online platforms, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Diigo, Kippt, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blogger, Sett, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
To learn more about the benefits of this plugin, go here: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get useful information about your content marketing efforts), we have written a detailed article on social media monitoring tools and technologies that will help you identify new trends and opportunities, track competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that could affect your business,etc. Go here to learn more:
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 Blueprint: Content Sharing Phase – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins set up and configured, all you have to do then is post fresh content regularly to automatically attract new traffic.
We have created an entire email training series designed to help you never run out of great content for your site:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is covered in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
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