E-commerce Blogging Tips & Blog Post Checklist
A quick search online shows that many e-commerce brand owners and marketers are asking,
“Should I add a blog to my e-commerce website?”
“Do blogs help e-commerce websites?”
“Is blogging to promote my shop worth it?”
And my super short answer is…
Yes! Blogging consistently helps showcase your products, attracts organic traffic, and builds a loyal customer audience for your store.
E-commerce Blogging Tips
I have written hundreds of blog posts during my time working in digital marketing. For the company I worked for early in my career, I remember feeling excited seeing my efforts pay off as organic traffic from Google rose from around 2k unique visits a month to around 6k – all within four short months!
However, that was a few years ago and even though blogging and SEO has changed since then, I still recommend that your e-commerce business has a blog and that you regularly publish new blog posts.
Overall I think that blogging is a really important content marketing tool for e-commerce businesses.
If you create blog content that is valuable, informative and relevant to your audience, you can establish yourself as an expert in your field, drive more traffic, and ultimately make more sales!
In this post, you’ll discover the benefits of blogging for e-commerce businesses, tips for getting started and creating successful blog content.
Key Benefits of Blogging for E-commerce Brands
- You can get in front of your ideal customers, so they can learn about you, trust you, and ultimately buy from you.
- Publishing valuable content helps you establish your brand’s expertise and authority in your niche and builds trust with potential customers.
- Blogging regularly improves your e-commerce website’s search engine rankings and drives more organic traffic to your website over time.
- You can educate and engage your customers with your content such as information about your products, industry trends, and helpful tips.
- It’s a great way of humanising your brand, giving a voice to the business; here you can show who you are, and why you do what you do.
- It gives you more content for your site, allowing you to connect with your audience – aka your potential customers! – further.
- Blog posts also make excellent content pieces to share across your social media channels and you can easily repurpose your blog posts into social media captions.
- Blog posts are the perfect place to use keywords and add links to your products, which works towards improving your SEO. More organic traffic from search engines means more potential customers discovering your products and services.
- You can also grow your email list from your blog posts by offering valuable content that addresses your audience’s interests and encourages them to subscribe to your newsletter.
- You can use blog posts to help guide potential customers through the buying process, influencing their purchasing decisions and ultimately increasing your sales.
5 Tips to Start and Grow an E-commerce Blog
1. Set your blog up for success
My first e-commerce blogging tip for you is to make sure you get everything properly set up with your blog. Doing this helps ensure you’re successful with all your blogging efforts right from the start.
Make sure the blog section of your e-commerce website fits in with the rest of your site, and play around with the settings and theme to get it looking its best.
It’s crucial to set specific, measurable goals for your blog. This helps you stay focused and measure your progress.
Common blogging goals for e-commerce businesses include:
- Building brand awareness
- Increasing traffic
- Boosting sales
Identifying what you want to achieve, means you can tailor your content and strategies to meet these goals effectively.
Next, decide on some sort of posting schedule. Do you want to share a blog post weekly, once a fortnight, or every month? Make a plan and stick to it! Consistency is key to keeping your audience engaged and coming back for more.
Finally, make sure your blog posts are shareable directly from the page by including social media sharing widgets on your blog pages. This way, readers can easily share your content with their networks, helping you reach a wider audience without any extra effort on your part.
Right, after you’ve got everything ready the next thing to do is to create a blogging strategy…
2. Create a good blog strategy
As with any aspect of your business, jumping straight in without some sort of plan is rarely helpful. You need a strategy – a plan of action to help you get started and a structure to follow that you won’t deviate from.
Creating a well-thought-out blog strategy should form part of your overall e-commerce marketing strategy ensuring your efforts are focused and help you achieve your blogging goals effectively.
Ensure that your plan is consistently achievable, even during busier months. It’s better to publish a blog post just once a month rather than publishing two a week for a few months and then abandoning it for months on end.
Consistency builds trust and keeps your audience engaged, while erratic posting will lead to disengagement and a loss of readers.
3. Coming up with blog topics
Coming up with blog topic ideas can be difficult. To get started you might find it easier to write about what interests you, whilst at the same time considering your audience and what will interest them.
This will make it easier for you to start coming up with ideas, and you’ll be more engaged in the writing process.
There are a few different ways you can come up with topics that will both capture your readers’ attention and help you grow your blog traffic.
First, consider your target audience. What are they interested in? What do they want to learn more about in terms of your products?
Once you have a sense of what your potential customers are into and what they want to know more about, you can start brainstorming ideas for blog posts which will address those topics, answer their questions and keep them entertained.
Another way to get e-commerce blog post ideas is to look for trending topics online or find upcoming events related to your niche or industry; put together your own take on what’s happening, and turn it into a blog post.
Don’t be afraid of doing some competitor research too – just to find out what topics have previously worked well for others in your industry. I’m not saying plagiarise what other people have written, but it will give you a good idea of what areas to be looking at when it comes to writing blog posts for your business.
You can also repurpose your popular social media posts into long-form content; pad it out with quotes from others in the industry, statistics and more of your own opinions.
Best types of blog content e-commerce stores:
There are a few types of blog content that work especially well for e-commerce stores. Here are a few examples:
- Product reviews and roundups.
- How-to guides and tutorials.
- Behind-the-scenes looks at your business or team.
- Industry news and trends.
- Guest posts from other industry experts.
- Contests and giveaways.
- Customer stories and case studies.
- Humour and entertaining content.
If you need some blog topic ideas read my post which features a whole list of ideas for e-commerce blog posts.
4. Writing your best content
You don’t have to be the best writer in the world.
You just need to ensure your blog posts are written to the best of your ability (or consider outsourcing) and that they make sense.
Run them through a spell-checker and, if possible, get someone else to read them before you publish them anywhere.
Separate big chunks of text using headings as this is great for SEO and for reader-friendliness.
5. SEO basics to keep in mind
SEO can help you drive traffic to a site, here are some tips to keep in mind when writing your blog posts:
- Focus on one main keyword per blog post.
- Aim to provide high-quality content that deserves to be linked to!
- Link to a couple of your own website’s internal pages in your article.
- Include your keywords in your title and meta description.
E-commerce Blog Checklist
Here are two handy checklists I’ve created of things to do before and after publishing your new blog post to make sure it gets the attention it deserves.
Checklist 1 – before hitting publish:
- Is the content valuable and relevant to your target audience?
- Have you addressed their needs or interests effectively?
- Have you written a catchy title under XX characters in length?
- Is the title tag optimized with a primary keyword?
- Have you included relevant keywords naturally throughout the post?
- Are meta descriptions and headers (H1, H2, etc.) compelling and include keywords?
- Have you included relevant images, graphics, or videos to enhance the content?
- Are all visuals high-quality and properly formatted?
- Have you added alt text to images for accessibility and SEO purposes?
- Is there a clear and compelling CTA at the end of the post?
- Have you included internal links to other relevant pages or blog posts on your website?
- Are there external links to authoritative sources or references to support any statistics?
- Have you checked that all links are working correctly and lead to right pages?
Checklist 2 – after publishing a blog post:
- Interlink between this post and older posts as this will help your SEO efforts. Go through old posts and link to the new post from suitable key phrases where appropriate.
- Share the blog post on all relevant social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram stories (consider using the link sticker), LinkedIn and Threads.
- Feature the blog post in your next email newsletter. I recommend writing a brief summary and a compelling call-to-action that encourages people to click through to read the full post.
- Submit your blog post to relevant content aggregators for example, Reddit, Flipboard, or industry-specific communities to reach a wider audience.
- Create a visually appealing pin design for the blog post and share it on Pinterest.
- Consider repurposing the blog post into other formats such as infographics, podcasts, or video content to appeal to different audience preferences.
- Reach out to those mentioned in the post such as influencers, brands, or industry experts, and ask if they could share the article.
- Incorporate the blog post into your evergreen content strategy by periodically resharing it on social media and including it in email newsletters.
Below, I’ve gone into some more detail on how to promote your new blog post on social media…
How to use social media to amplify your e-commerce blog content
When you create great blog content, of course you’ll want to make sure as many people as possible see it.
One of the best ways to make sure of that is to regularly and consistently promote your content on social media.
Not only will this help you to reach a larger audience, but it can also help to increase traffic to your blog and store.
Keep reading to learn a few tips to maximize the impact of your blog post on social media…
Starting with a good hook, write engaging captions that highlight the value of your content, and post the link to the blog post wherever possible.
Use relevant hashtags to ensure your social media posts – and therefore your blog posts – are seen by as many people as possible.
Use eye-catching images in your social media posts to capture attention and help illustrate what the post is actually about. Studies show that blog posts with visuals get a whopping 94% more views, so this one is really important.
Utilize social media scheduling tools to strategically schedule posts at optimal times for maximum reach and engagement across different time zones.
Engagement is key on social media – so keep an eye on comments, replies, and shares, and ensure you respond to all comments.
Use Instagram stories, Facebook stories, and LinkedIn stories to provide additional context or behind-the-scenes insights about your blog post.
On your social media platforms, track metrics such as reach, engagement rates, click-through rates, and conversions. Use these insights to refine your content strategy, focusing on content types and posting times that generate the highest engagement and drive the most traffic to your blog.
Don’t miss this free resource download 👇
Free Social Media Captions & Ideas for Product-Based Businesses
How to measure the effectiveness of your e-commerce blog
Speaking of tracking metrics, don’t forget to check your website analytics to see how effective your blog posts are.
Pay special attention to page views and the average time spent on each page.
Make a note of which topics seem to be the most popular, and create more content based on those – as this is clearly what the people want to see!
You should be checking your analytics regularly (at least monthly) as these things do change. Create a spreadsheet to track all of your statistics if that’s the way you roll, or write them in pride of place on a big whiteboard wherever you do your laptop work.
Key Takeaways
What we’ve talked about in this post here should help you understand the basics of blogging for e-commerce businesses, and get you on the right track for creating your own content.
It doesn’t have to be difficult and you don’t need to be the world’s best writer – write about what you know, making sure it is clear and concise and not full of technical jargon. Your business will thank you for it.
As we’ve seen, creating quality blog posts can pay big dividends – you just need to get started!
Hopefully this blog post has inspired you to write your first one…
