Blogging is as common a concept for successful businesses’ today as setting a budget. Blogging as a business is a marketing strategy to gain visibility and expand growth through blog posts. You wouldn’t send a product or service out into the world without some form of traditional marketing, would you? This is the same concept, but in the form of a blog hosted within your business site. It’s the modern-day free version of advertising.
To put it simply, eCommerce businesses’ cannot succeed without a business blog. Let’s take a look at why blogging is important for your eCommerce business.
Business Blogging Drives Traffic
Unless you’re an established company, there’s a slim chance someone will search for your business directly word for word. In fact, I challenge you to think about the last time you directly typed in a company’s address into the search bar without Googling it first. Businesses can’t sit back and wait for traffic to naturally occur. They’ve got to reach out and grab it through SEO tactics. If you’re not familiar here’s a brief overview.
- SEO stands for search engine optimization. SEO is utilized in keywords, or search terms, that gain a lot of search and attention on Google. For example, the keyword ‘quality control’ should be a term utilized in eCommerce blogs to garner traffic to their site.
- SEO is obviously more in-depth than this, but the point is that SEO is used heavily in blogging, and therefore blogging drives traffic to your business.
The more you blog, the more opportunities and pages you have to rank high in Google’s search engines. This growth signals to Google that your business is worthy of attention, and so its algorithms are more likely to keep tabs on your business blog.
Establish Authority
Once you’re running your blog as a business, it’s important to make efforts towards establishing authority. Write posts that answer common customer questions and concerns. Give people advice on how to use your product, or hacks, even. Creating an educational resource bank for customers sets them up for success, which can only increase their loyalty to your company. Educational content is also great for potential customers who may just be on the cusp of purchasing your product or service. If they can see that a company itself is providing them with everything they need to know, they’re more likely to become educated enough to purchase your product confidently.
Here’s a few content ideas to get an eCommerce blog started:
- Tips and tricks about your product or service
- How-Tos
- Use cases
- Case Studies to show how others use your product or service
- Infographics - people love images and statistical data.
- FAQ or Q&A with business owner
- Share the story of how your company started - this creates a sense of transparency for customers and gives them a better sense of who you are and where you’re coming from
If you can establish your company as the authority in your field, you’re golden. Create constant content that answers customer questions before they even knew they had them.
Blog as A Business to Increase Leads
Potential customers will not convert to leads without reason. Once you’ve established your company as an authority, and really even before that level, attach call-to-action buttons on every blog post. Call-to-action buttons lead to free content offers for readers, and are often displayed by phrases like, “Download Free eBook” or “Get Your Free Spreadsheet Now.”
Call-to-action buttons could lead to any of the following offers (and then some):
- Sign up for webinar
- Free factsheet
- Free spreadsheet template
- Free eBook
- Free whitepaper
- Free trial
- Free template of some other form
Once someone has clicked on the call-to-action they are directed to a landing page where they fill out their information to receive the offer. It’s best to include no more than seven entries for visitors to fill out because you only want to collect the information you absolutely need. Once the entry is submitted they are now available as leads for the sales team. This also means you have their contact information to add to an email list.
eCommerce Blogs as A Resource
When your blog becomes established it becomes a resource not only for customers, but also for the sales team. Encourage the sales team to stay up-to-date with the most recent blog posts so they can be educated in finding the best solution for potential customers on the phone. Better yet, create a segmented list of blog posts by category so sales team members can easily pick and choose a blog to answer a customer’s question. Potentials will be impressed by quick and thorough solutions.
Creating reliable and accurate information could produce a spike in old fashioned word-of-mouth referrals. If a potential is so impressed they may be inclined to tell others, either online or in person. Who knew this whole blog thing could kick it old school?
Social Media Leads
Social media is an immense opportunity to expose blog posts to your target audience. Not only will it reach the news feeds of people that already follow your accounts, but it opens up the potential for non-followers to read your posts as well. When followers retweet, share, like, or comment on your post it exposes your blog to a wealth of other people who may have been unaware of your business. It’s free advertising. (Learn how one company converted mobile traffic at 5% with social media advertising).
Remember to link to your website on the social media account’s bio space. When potentials click on your site or blog post link from social media it creates a new metric to track whether or not your social efforts are working. Social media is also an outlet to advertise press releases and company event information, which should also be written in your blog. Take advantage of free platforms to spread the word on your product or service.
Recap
Blogging as a business is very important for eCommerce companies to gain sales leads and survive, in general. Build up a content and SEO strategy to drive traffic to your blog. The ultimate goal is to become an expert in your field. For some inspiration, check out these successful eCommerce blogs dominating the market right now.
