Essential Blogging Tips for E-commerce Businesses

Blogging really is an important content marketing tool for e-commerce businesses. By creating blog content that is valuable, informative and relevant to your audience, you can establish yourself as an expert in your field, improve your website’s SEO, drive more traffic, attract more visitors, and build meaningful customer relationships. 

 

In this post, we’ll discuss the benefits of blogging for e-commerce businesses, tips for creating successful blog content, and ways to measure the success of your blogging efforts.

Benefits of blogging for e-commerce brands 

Blogging is one of the best ways to get in front of your ideal customers, so they can learn about you, trust you, and ultimately buy from you. It gives you more content for your site, allowing you to connect with your audience – aka your potential customers! – further.

 

A blog post can do wonders for humanising your brand, giving a voice to the business; here you can show who you really are, and why you do what you do.

 

Blog posts are the perfect place to use keywords and add links, meaning they are only ever going to improve your SEO anyway. Then, when people do find them, you might find you’ve got yourself a brand new customer.

 

People use search engines multiple times per day, and if your blog post (and therefore your e-commerce website itself) comes up in the search results then you’re onto a winner: answering people’s questions and promoting your products at the same time. 

How to come up with blog topics for your brand

Coming up with ideas of what to write for your blog can be difficult, even with the different types of blog content in mind.

 

To get started you will 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 to come 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 audience. What are they interested in? What do they want to learn more about? Once you have a sense of what your readers 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.

Types of blog content that work well for 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.

 

Get inspired by these awesome ideas for e-commeece blog posts.

Tips for writing SEO friendly blog posts

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.

How to use social media to amplify your 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 when people read your blog, they’re spending time on your site – either boosting your SEO or making a purchase…

 

Here are a few tips for using social media to amplify your blog content:

 

  • Post the links to your blog posts on ALL of your social media channels with an engaging caption and a strong call to action.
  • Write headlines that are catchy and therefore encourage people to share your content with their own audience.
  • Use eye-catching images in your social media posts to capture attention and help illustrate what the post is actually about. Blog posts with visuals getting a whopping 94% more views, so this one is really important…
  • Make sure your blog posts are shareable directly from the page by including social media sharing widgets on your blog pages – this way there is absolutely no extra hard work involved. 
  • Use relevant hashtags to ensure your social media posts – and therefore your blog posts – are seen by as many people as possible.

Don’t miss this free resource download 👇

Free Social Media Captions & Ideas for Product-Based Businesses

Tips for creating a successful blog strategy 

As with any aspect of your business, jumping straight in without some sort of plan is rarely helpful. You need a strategy – but don’t let the S word put you off. You just need a plan of action to help you get started and follow a structure you won’t deviate from because you don’t know what you’re supposed to be doing when…

Set your blog up for success

Make sure the blog section of your e-commerce website fits in with the rest of your site, and play around with the settings to get it looking its best. Then, 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!

Continually engage your target audience and gain their trust

Using the different types of blog posts listed above, come up with a list of blog post titles which you can then plan and write, turning them from ideas into fruitful blog posts which your audience will appreciate and enjoy. Give them value, providing information and entertainment – a lot of business comes from solving pain points, so let your readers know you can do just that…

Write the best content

Ensure your blog posts are well-written and 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 texts using headings (this is great for SEO and for reader-friendliness) and embellish your blog posts with images too. Be sure to use alt text!

How to measure the effectiveness of your blogging efforts 

Google Analytics (G4) is one of the best ways to see how effective your blog posts are. It is completely free and allows you to see which of your blog posts are doing particularly well in terms of views and average time spent on each post.

 

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 can also see the search terms that people have used which have led them to the blog section of your e-commerce site; again this a great indicator of what people are looking for…

 

You should be checking 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.

Get started with blogging today! 

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 isn’t difficult, and it can pay big dividends—you just need to get started! Hopefully this blog post has inspired you to write your first one…

Helen Garfield
Helen Garfield

Helen Garfield is the founder of The Creatives Desk. She has worked in social media and digital marketing since 2010. Helen channels her passion for design and creativity to develop marketing templates and digital products that help small business owners create compelling content to drive growth in their online presence.