If you have an eCommerce store, one of the best things you can do to drive more sales is start a blog. Blogging may seem daunting to some, but it offers tremendous benefits that are too big to ignore.
A blog allows you to post regular content and create customer relationships by answering their questions and providing helpful information. It also lets people get to know your brand better while staying connected no matter where they are.
Moreover, search engines can pick up quality blog posts and generate more organic traffic over time, meaning more potential buyers for your products.
By combining effective blogging with other marketing strategies for your eCommerce store, you should be able to reach a much broader audience in no time.
6 Reasons to Start a Blog for eCommerce
With the boom in ecommerce, you need to make sure your site has keyword-rich, relevant content developed by an expert in ecommerce content writing to stand out. Aside from standing out amongst your competition, the benefits of custom content are tangible. What exactly is a blog going to do for your ecommerce site?
1. Blogging Helps Build Brand Awareness and Credibility
Having a blog on your ecommerce website helps build brand awareness, which can have a positive impact on sales.
By regularly creating content related to your business, you can establish yourself as an authority in the industry. This will give people more confidence in your products and services, making them more likely to buy from you.
Also, when customers read or watch content that they find helpful or entertaining, they are more likely to share it with their friends or colleagues—which can help increase your reach even further.
2. Blogging Allows You To Connect With Your Audience
Blogging gives you an opportunity to connect with your audience and build relationships with them. It allows you to communicate directly with potential customers and hear their feedback and ideas for improving your products or services.
Additionally, by responding quickly and engagingly with customer comments on blog posts, you show that you care about their opinion which helps build trust between you and the customer—a critical factor when it comes to making sales online.
3. Blogging Can Help Improve Your SEO Rankings
Search engine optimization (SEO) is essential for any business that wants its website visible online. By regularly creating content related to the topics being searched by potential customers using keywords relevant to your industry, you can improve your rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs).
This will make it easier for people searching online for something related to what you offer to find your website more easily—which means more visitors coming directly from search engines!
4. Increase traffic
To give you a better understanding of how blogging can increase your traffic, Jayson DeMers explained it like this,
“In terms of search engine rankings, I like to think of blogging as fishing.The more hooks you have in the water, the more likely you are to catch a fish. In the same way, as you add more content to your site, more pages from your domain become indexed in search engines. This improves organic search visibility and increases website traffic.”
Increased traffic = increased sales.
5. ROI
Think about it like this, you put a blog post out there once and it could keep bringing in returns years from now.
What kind of other sales tool requires that small of an investment and that long of a return period? None.
6. Command of your field
The word “authority” gets thrown around a lot when discussing content marketing and for good reason. Custom content for the readers of your ecommerce blog will give you command of your market through the expert information you provide.
Who do customers buy from? Companies they trust.
More specifically, companies they trust to give them solid information that they can use to make a purchase decision.
Companies like Shopify with ecommerce and 99designs with design services have honed in on becoming the authority in their field and turning their expertise into cash flow!
For the sake of not providing you a novel, I’ve only listed 3. If you want to learn more about what a blog can do for your business, here are 7 more excellent incentives to prioritize your business blog this year!
Product comparison and reviews: Help your customer research your products
Reviews and comparisons are great! But…how do you get them?
In comes your handy-dandy ecommerce blog to save the day! Your blog will encourage engagement and activity from the online community. Use it to interact with bloggers that do reviews and comparisons.
A quick Google search on ‘blogs that review products’ brought up this TwirlyGirl post about the top 10 mom bloggers to review products. Twirly Girl isn’t just any ole’ blog, it’s a blog on their ecommerce site!
I found this post, doing what most customers are doing when doing their research online–looking for reviews and comparisons. That post is a great example of interesting, sought-after content.
A significant 81% of shoppers conduct online research before buying.
Shoppers come for the information and stay for the purchase!
Feeling out the market
Inventory selection for future products can be tricky. You don’t want to invest too much into a product that won’t be a hit among shoppers.
Use your ecommerce blog to feel out your customers.
“Every entrepreneur should count on at least a couple of adjustments or pivots before they get it right. The challenge is to spend minimal time and money learning. After a few blogs about your concept, the comments better match your passion, or it’s time to rethink your idea.” –Marty Zwilling, CEO and founder of Startup Professionals, Inc., a company designed to assist entrepreneurs, start-ups, and small business owners find mentoring and resources.
Listicles (Top 10 This or 5 Must-Have That) are a fantastic way to grab attention because who doesn’t love a good list?! But, they’re also useful for gauging product popularity.
For instance, if you were thinking about adding sleeping bags to your sporting-goods store, you could post a list of the top 10 sleeping bags of 2017. Then, use your engagement and comments to decide which brand you’d like to carry.
The reverse is also true that you can use any negative reviews or comparisons or unfavorable comments on a product or service to cut the inventory that’s not good for your wallet or your reputation.
Sales! Sales! Sales! Hire an eCommerce content writing expert
Taking everything above into consideration, starting a blog for your ecommerce store is a pretty great idea!
Even better–you don’t have to worry about it. There are writing agencies that staff writers specialized in ecommerce content. Don’t worry about the content, don’t worry about the strategy. That’s what your writer is for.
All you need to focus on now is growing your ecommerce store!
David is the Founder and Director of article-writing.co, the fastest-growing content creation agency in North America. He has transformed companies by offering high-quality content that has impacted their SEO ranking, revitalized websites with engaging and industry-relevant blogs and website copy, and championed successful email campaign copy.
