As a retail business owner, you’ll understand the importance of marketing.
You need to build your eCommerce presence online, create attention-grabbing in-store displays and build an audience on social media, and for email marketing. (That’s with juggling everything else you have to think about!) These efforts often fall a bit flat when it comes to blogging. However, there’s a lot of reasons you should start thinking about starting a blog for your eCommerce website.
There are loads of benefits to starting a blog for your eCommerce website. You might be initially put off by thinking it’ll be time-consuming, or you’re not the writing type. However, a blog can help raise awareness of what you do and sell. It can help express your brand personality, increasing trust and loyalty. A blog will contribute to, and boost, your SEO efforts, drive conversions and grow your reach on social media.
A blog helps you put out regular content that adds value to your customers, rather than sell, sell, sell. You can generate a bit of buzz around your brand and products, inspiring action in a less direct way through persuasive storytelling.
Blogging regularly shows that you’re active online. Not having a blog is a little like having a store with no lights on. You’re there, but it might not look it from the outside!
Blog Tips
If you’re struggling for blog ideas, we’ve got you covered;
- Tell your brand story
- Gift guides: gifts for him/her, Christmas gifts, ideal birthday gifts, or even focus on hobbies like gifts for foodies, or gifts for gardeners etc. You can get super creative here and have fun with it
- Product launches and announcements for new lines added
- Demonstrations and tutorials
- Case studies
- Company news – let the world know more about what you and your team are up to and achieving
- Press releases
- Industry thought pieces
Things to include in your blog:
- Link to the products you are talking about in your blog
- Include social media sharing buttons
- Calls to action – inspire readers to take action whether that is to sign up to your newsletter, get in touch or make a purchase
- Include a newsletter sign up option so you can build your audience
- Make sure your blogs are SEO friendly (relevant keywords, URLs and meta descriptions which we also touch a bit more on in this blog about how to drive traffic to your eCommerce site)
Maintaining your blog
We get it, you’re probably balancing a million and one things right now and thinking you definitely don’t have the time to start blogging too. It’s hard to keep up with a lot of other stuff when running a business. However, if you are starting out on this journey – given all the benefits above – then our best advice is to keep things fun! When it comes to writing a blog for your website, it’ll be something you’re passionate about and have an interest in – it’s your business after all! So, keep things fun and don’t see it as a chore.
You can also consider sharing the job with others in your company. Can some of your team contribute blogs from various job roles and stores? Having a collective voice is a really nice way to capture a full scope of your brand personality for larger operations. If you’ve got the budget, you might also want to consider hiring a freelance copywriter or even hiring someone in-house to manage your website content and write for you.
Promoting your blog
You’ve put in all the hard work of planning, researching, writing, and uploading your blog to your website. But, what’s next?
Getting your blog in front of people is really important so make sure you share it with your network. You’ll want to share it via social media channels and on your email newsletters. It’s really nice content to share in this way as it’s not a ‘hard sell’, you’re adding value for your customers with (hopefully) helpful content.
You can also try guest blogging and writing for other outlets, too. This can work well for gaining links back to your website (contributing to SEO) but moreover getting your name out there and reaching wider audiences.
Final thoughts
One of the most important things to remember when starting a blog for your eCommerce website is that it’s not going to be an overnight success. Your blog probably (…definitely) won’t go viral. That’s not to say your writing isn’t amazing and engaging and witty and entertaining! But the internet is very discerning and unless you’re a funny cat playing the keyboard or double rainbow, your content is most likely not going to get in front of hundreds of millions of people.
Blogging success requires consistency. Being authentic and genuine will help get your personality across and endear more readers. They’ll feel much more engaged and come back for more, as opposed to writing dry, drab content that they can find on any old website.
Whilst you’re here, if you’re looking for a new website that’s going to scale with you as you grow, why not get in touch with the team at Venditan? We know a thing or two about eCommerce website development.
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