So many times, a lot of people have declared blogging a thing of the past. Its death has been predicted and even confirmed over and over again. And yet it’s still here, actually thriving, but just in a different form.
If you’re in eCommerce, or any business for that matter, you’ll see just how important blogging still is. It can still help generate useful, valuable content on your site even if it’s an online store. It can still contribute to boosting your site traffic and potential visitors. There’s a lot that blogging is still able to do for businesses of all sizes.
What Blogging Can Do for You
Running an e-store doesn’t mean you can forget about blogging and simply focus on your product pages. It’s blog entries that actually provide additional information to prospective buyers and even existing customers that they will surely appreciate. After all, your target market is already interested in your niche. Hence, writing and posting blogs that will help them will certainly be of great value at no extra cost.
VALUE – So the first reason that you should still continue to blog is to provide more value for your target audience. You can come up with guides on how to utilize your products, or you can have comparison reviews, interviews with authorities in your field, industry updates, and more.
Let’s say you’re selling gaming laptops. Providing tips on how to maximize the use of the laptop would make for a really good article. How about a cheat sheet for a particular popular computer game? That would probably attract the attention of your target market too.
TRAFFIC – Naturally, the more relevant content you have for your market, the greater possibility there is of more people flocking to your website. And we’re not just talking about anyone. You can actually drive your targeted visitors to your site with good regular blogging of wonderful value.
Traffic means a lot, although it’s just one of the initial steps or goals. What’s good is that these visitors can become more engaged with your brand and with your site if you blog regularly and give true value.
SEO – Just like blogging, SEO has been declared “dead” several times. It’s not true, though. This is still considered an important factor in improving your ranking of search engine results pages. When you have a lot of blog entries that are of significant content and value, then your SEO will likely improve. This may capture the attention of more prospective customers.
BRANDING – In this very competitive eCommerce world, branding matters. It’s how your project your name and business and how people perceive you and your products and services. Your voice can be heard through blogging, and it actually positions you as an industry leader— a brand that is an authority in your specific turf.
CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP – It’s always important to build very good customer relationships along the way. As top online marketers always say, you ought to work on developing raving fans rather than mere buyers. You have to interact with these people and get to know them. You have to learn their ways, their hurts and wishes, wants and needs.
One way to go about it is through your blog, where they learn more about you and what you know and where you can also encourage and get feedback through the comments.
CONTENT – Not everyone cares much about full-blown descriptions. But if you need to share larger content, it would be best to have a dedicated section for that— your blog. After all, it won’t be appealing to the audience to have long write-ups and explanations on the product pages. It’s on the blog that you can tackle the care guide tips, share comprehensive product testimonials, and compare features on a full scale.
Therefore, going through these reasons, you must understand that ecommerce sites should also maintain blogs.
How Often You Need to Blog
It doesn’t really need to be daily. If you can, then go ahead. That would be great! But if you can’t, then try to at least blog about 3 to 4 times a week. This will make your presence known, strengthen your brand, and allow you to connect with people sufficiently.
You just have to remember to vary your blog posts and make them interesting. For example, you can incorporate interviews with popular figures and industry leaders. You can also share interesting videos, infographics, and other media items that will surely captivate your audience and keep them engaged.
The frequency of blogging, however, is not as important as the content itself. The form is also essential, but you must first work on ensuring that your content is valuable and relevant. For example, if you’re selling dog food, then it probably wouldn’t make sense to share news on the weather— unless this would affect the quality of the food or if you relate it to dogs’ eating patterns.
It would be good to hire a freelance writer to do the blogging for you, if you can afford it and if you don’t have time to do it. Just leverage on someone else’s time, effort, and talent. This is also better for you if writing is not your forte. Instead of spending tons of time trying to learn it and craft good sentences, why don’t you just focus on what you’re good at? Perhaps you’re a marketing pro so just do that for your business instead of worrying about something that you’re not an expert at.
Indeed blogging is highly recommended for eCommerce sites. With an active blog, your business will experience better reviews, greater engagement with customers, and of course more sales in the long run.