In today's digital landscape, where competition for attention is fierce, building a strong online presence is crucial for any business. While advertising, social media, and community building play important roles, blogging offers a unique and powerful way to connect with your audience and drive growth.
Think about it: every time you search online for information, you're likely encountering either a dedicated informational webpage or a blog article. Blogging empowers you to create valuable content that answers questions, educates, and builds trust with your audience.
Here's why blogging is so beneficial for your Shopify business:
- Attract and engage potential customers: By creating informative and engaging content, you can attract visitors who are actively seeking information related to your products or industry. This positions you as a trusted source and increases the likelihood of them exploring your Shopify store.
- Build brand authority: Consistent blogging demonstrates your expertise and passion for your industry. By offering valuable insights and solutions to common problems, you establish yourself as a thought leader and build credibility for your brand.
- Boost SEO and website traffic: Search engines like Google favor websites with fresh, high-quality content. Regular blogging helps improve your website's SEO ranking, driving more organic traffic to your Shopify store.
- Increase conversions: By providing valuable information and building trust, you can guide potential customers towards making a purchase. Blogging can be a powerful tool for nurturing leads and converting visitors into loyal customers.
- Strengthen customer relationships: Through interactive elements like comments and social media shares, blogging provides opportunities for meaningful conversations with your audience, fostering a sense of community and loyalty.
Unlike landing pages, which are primarily focused on conversion, blogging offers a more versatile approach. It allows you to create content tailored to specific needs, whether it's answering customer questions, sharing industry insights, or showcasing your unique brand story.
In a world where information is readily available, blogging allows you to stand out by offering valuable, engaging content that resonates with your audience. This, in turn, drives traffic, builds trust, and ultimately helps you achieve your business goals.
How blogging has evolved
In the world today, all companies need an online presence, from a small bootstrapped company to a massively funded business. It's something all companies should be thinking about and considering how they can utilise it.
Blogging started as a way for people to share their personal thoughts and experiences online. It was like having a digital diary, but accessible to anyone with internet access. Over time, blogs evolved to become more than just personal journals.
Today, blogs are powerful marketing tools. Businesses use them to connect with customers, build brand awareness, and generate leads. Many bloggers also leverage their audience to earn income through advertising, affiliate marketing, and selling their own products or services.
So, while blogging started as a simple way to share stories, it's grown into a versatile tool with a wide range of applications.
Types of Blogs
A successful ecommerce store isn't just about selling products; it's about building a community and becoming a trusted source of information. Blogs, a versatile and dynamic tool, play a key role in achieving this. But not all blogs are created equal. Understanding the different types of blog content and their relevance to your ecommerce store is crucial for maximizing your online presence.
Product-Focused Blogs:
- Product Reviews: Offer in-depth analyses of your products, highlighting features, benefits, and potential downsides. This builds trust and helps customers make informed decisions.
- How-to Guides: Showcase product usage and demonstrate its value. For example, "5 Ways to Style Our New Summer Dress" or "Troubleshooting Your New Coffee Maker."
- Behind-the-Scenes: Share the story behind your products, the inspiration, and the design process. This humanizes your brand and fosters connection with customers.
- Comparison Guides: Compare your products with competitors or different models, showcasing your unique selling points.
Industry-Related Blogs:
- Educational Content: Position yourself as an authority in your niche by providing insightful articles, tutorials, and guides on relevant industry topics.
- Trend Reports: Keep your audience informed about the latest trends, developments, and innovations in your field. This establishes your brand as a thought leader.
- Case Studies: Showcase real-life examples of how your products or services have helped customers. This builds credibility and inspires trust.
Customer-Centric Blogs:
- Customer Stories: Share positive experiences from your customers, highlighting their successes and how your products have made a difference.
- FAQs and Troubleshooting: Address common customer questions and concerns, providing valuable information and improving customer satisfaction.
- Community Building: Foster a sense of community by inviting customer contributions, hosting contests, or sharing their creative projects.
Some reasons why you should build a blog
Getting free traffic to your website is a dream for most businesses, just sitting back and seeing your website convert without the need to pay for advertising or outreaching to potential customers. I think one idea a lot of entrepreneurs fall in love with is the idea of making money while you sleep.
Did you know building a blog can contribute to this being a reality, what I mean is you need traffic and leads in order to convert and make more sales. But you can only add so many product pages and landing pages, you need a way to grow your traffic while at the same time increasing your credibility to convince someone that you are selling a great product.
With blogging you can dive deep into why your company is the best at selling a certain product and discuss the various aspects of why that is true. As people search Google, they may stumble upon one of your articles and gain a deeper understanding of your business and your products.
Some advantages of building a blog include:
Boosting Traffic & Visibility:
- Increased Organic Search Traffic: A blog provides fresh, relevant content that search engines love, improving your website's SEO and driving more organic traffic.
- Wider Audience Reach: Blog posts can be shared on social media, attracting new audiences and expanding your reach beyond your existing customer base.
- Stronger Brand Awareness: Regular content creation establishes you as an expert in your field, building brand trust and recognition.
Enhancing Customer Engagement & Conversions:
- Building Relationships: Engaging blog content can foster a sense of community, encouraging readers to interact, comment, and share their experiences.
- Providing Value: Offer informative, entertaining, and helpful content that addresses your customers' needs and interests, building trust and loyalty.
- Promoting Products & Services: Integrate product mentions and recommendations within your blog posts, showcasing your offerings in a natural and engaging way.
- Boosting Sales: Use blog content to highlight special offers, new products, or seasonal promotions, driving conversions and increasing sales.
Improving User Experience & Retention:
- Providing Additional Value: Blog content can offer valuable insights, tips, and resources that complement your product offerings, enriching the overall customer experience.
- Building a Knowledge Base: Answering frequently asked questions and addressing common customer concerns through blog posts can reduce customer support inquiries.
- Encouraging Website Engagement: Interactive elements like polls, quizzes, or user-generated content can encourage visitors to spend more time on your website.
- Creating a Community: Encourage comments and discussions around your blog posts, fostering a sense of community and encouraging repeat visits.
Another advantage is the collection of content that you can one day repurpose for social media or video services like YouTube. With an archive of content, most of the research and content planning has been done, so repurposing content to either drive more online awareness or to boost your social media following will be easier to do. We will talk deep about repurposing content in a future guide.
The pieces of a blog
When building a blog you will need to think about and define a few pieces of your blog. Each piece is important to ensure you blog is easy to use, easy for search engines to understand and correctly rank, and most importantly easy for you to promote your products in a relevant and effective way.
1. Blog posts
IV. Key Components of a Blog
- Blog posts: Regularly published content that provides information, entertainment, or inspiration.
- Blog platform: The software used to create and manage a blog (e.g., WordPress, Blogger, Medium).
- Blog design: The visual aesthetic of the blog, including layout, color scheme, and typography.
- Blog content: The written, visual, or audio material that is shared on the blog.
- Blog promotion: Strategies to reach a wider audience, including social media sharing, email marketing, and guest posting.
Getting started with blogging in Shopify
Writing a blog can take time, so its important to ensure you are patient, ready to write about a certain subject and most importantly know who you are writing about.
Based on you running an online store, you have a collection of products designed for a certain person, this is who you should be writing for. So the first step should be to consider who are you writing for and what problems they may be searching for. This will help you get started with increasing traffic.
We will go deeper on content strategy in the future, but some important points would be:
- Who are you writing for
- What problems do they have
- Why are they problems
- How can you help with an article
And where would be your blog is the answer to the problems they may have. There are other considerations like keyword research and understand Google search result pages (SERPs), but we will go deeper on these topics in a later article.
Time to start building
To get started with building, Shopify provides a blog component under the online store. All Shopify stores have a built in blog, just make sure your theme has support for the blog, mainly the blog list page and the blog article pages. If the theme is not compatible, you may need to extend the theme with some code, or look for an alternative theme.
If you are looking for something more powerful and to create more engaging content, check out Blogity.com.
With the blog table, you can add a new article. The blog editor accepts HTML, for formatting but the editor has some formatting options available to allow some control over content formatting. Please only format if it makes sense, think about your readers and why they are on your article. Mainly think about good formatting around headings, lists and bold text for anything important.
Once you have written something, you can publish the article and it will be live on your website.
We will go deeper on the Shopify blog editor in a dedicated article.