Every industry has a blogging community. Whether it’s the fashion industry, music industry or the tools industry, there are always groups of people creating content for advice and entertainment purposes. Starting a business blog for your Ecommerce shop isn’t an easy task but the return on investment can be very impressive. We wrote briefly about starting a trends or inspiration blog in our post 5 Ways to use Content Marketing Drive Traffic to your Ecommerce Shop but this post will go more into depth about the reasons why you need to add a blog to your to-do list and how to measure its progress through Key Performance Indicators.
5 Arguments to Point you in the Right Direction
You don’t have to limit your word count
In comparison to product descriptions, a blog post can provide much more detail about the products and services your company offers. You have creative freedom to advise, inspire and promote your business in any way you’d like without having to consider the word count. At the same time, it’s important not to appear too ‘promotional’ in your blog so make sure your pieces are genuinely helpful and insightful covering a range of topics in your field. With the help of call to action buttons and links within the text, blog posts can be an invaluable source of sales leads.
You can top up your traffic
Blogs are a great way to boost your website traffic, conversion rates and SEO efforts. The main purpose of a blog should be to drive your target market to your shop to spend money and if you produce interesting relevant content with your favoured keywords, you’ll keep them coming back for more. Furthermore, blogs lead to link building – through social media sharing – and companies that blog have 97% more inbound links.1 This is essential for SEO.
You can gain a loyal readership
Linked to the previous point is the fact that blogs increase trust. 81% of U.S. online consumers trust information and advice from blogs so now is the time to give consumers what they want.2 They can add personality to a brand and this human touch increases the chance they will trust the quality of the product and services. When running any sort of business, you need to develop methods of increasing Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) and a blog can be one method of gaining popularity and a good reputation. Furthermore, blog content will never date or expire so its value will multiply as the page views accrue.
You can create a social hub for updates and new releases
Once you have established your loyal readership, you can make announcements about your products and company and know the right people people will read it. Furthermore you can supplement the information with other media such as images and video.
You have a medium to showcase your high quality content
Content is king these days and every Ecommerce shop should be looking of new ways to improve their content marketing strategy as an alternative to investing in Google Adwords. Furthermore, if your blog content offers exclusive offers and competitions it will encourage engagement and drive conversion rates. Everyone wants to think they are getting a special deal these days.
So you’ve started a blog now? Great! But how do you know if it’s worth your time and commitment? Here are the top 4 Blog Key Performance Indicators you need to keep an eye on.
1. State of Inbound
2. BlogHer
3. Information in table: Moz
4. Image 1: Blog Button copyright Gotcredit
5. Image 2: Social Media Icons – Sean McEntee