When you own a small business or e-commerce site, one of the challenges is standing out from the crowd.
After all, it doesn’t matter what you’re selling—chances are, you have a competitor. How can you distinguish yourself from others, and even compete against sellers much bigger than you?
One of the easiest ways is to create a blog.
A blog can help you show off what makes your store and products unique. It’s an opportunity for you to establish yourself as an expert that customers trust. It’s also a platform to share more of your mission and passion.
If you’re still on the fence about it, here are four great reasons to start your business blog:
Establish You/Your Site as an Industry Expert
It doesn’t matter what you’re selling, whether it’s replacement vacuum cleaner filters or homemade luxury soaps. Your target audience has questions and wants answers. Who better to satisfy their curiosity (and solve their problems!) than you?
That said, not every blog post has to be a detailed 5,000 word Q&A. You can post video tutorials, short-form blog posts, or just be generally informative about your space.
Above all, make sure your information is accurate, timely, and resourceful. Use these types of blog posts to subtly link back to your most relevant products for maximum impact.
As time goes by and you accumulate a back catalog of high-quality blog posts, you can update them to keep them fresh. In addition to staying relevant, this also serves to make sure you keep getting great SEO results. As a result, your store will gain in rankings on a SERP, which will drive traffic to your site.
Speaking of…
Increase Your Traffic
Hosting a high-quality blog on your site is a highly effective way of attracting new unique visitors. By keeping track of how visitors are landing on your website (through Google Analytics), you can get a feel for what type of content is working and what isn’t. Then you can make minor tweaks to your content development plan.
As you create more content, you’ll develop a rich library you can internally link to and share again and again on social media. Maybe you have great Thanksgiving recipes from your grandmother that feature some of the kitchen gadgets you sell. Being able to refresh those during the holidays can help build your rankings in search terms you didn’t consider.
Additionally, the traffic you get is the best kind: organic. These are visitors you get directly from a search engine that you haven’t paid for through something like Google AdWords. Organic traffic is, without a doubt, one of the best ways to increase your site’s natural ranking on search engines.
Show Off What Makes You Unique
A blog is more than just a place to be informative. It’s also a place to express your voice and leverage your business’s Unique Value Proposition (UVP). A UVP is what makes your store unique. It’s a brand identifier, and something customers can point to as being uniquely “yours.”
As an example, if we asked you to think of the first company that comes to mind when you hear, “One for one” would you think of TOMS Shoes? They pioneered the “one for one” business model, and it’s the cornerstone of their brand.
What about “Save Money, Live Better”? That one belongs to Walmart, which differentiates itself by having the lowest prices around.
These UVPs are forever linked with those companies. A blog is your chance to get a phrase or idea indelibly linked to your brand.
Once you forge that connection with your customers, you’re well on your way to fostering customer loyalty and valuable word of mouth advertising. When you create a community with your blog, your voice and your uniqueness can come shining through.
Target Your Customers’ Needs
Blogs also offer an exceptional opportunity to target and connect with your customers. By writing about things they’re interested in (beyond only what your products support), you demonstrate that you understand their challenges and interests.
If you sell makeup products, write about makeup tutorials, profile popular beauty bloggers, discuss industry issues, and share inspiring color palettes.
If you sell wine and bar accessories, team up with a mixologist to publish exciting new cocktail recipes. Profile the history of various popular cocktails. Write recipes that complement specific wines.
When you create content that your customers find relevant to their needs, you’re going to get meaningful interaction. This interaction can provide a deeper emotional connection with your site, which heavily influences future buying decisions.
There are many other reasons your e-store should have a blog, but what’s most important is the content ON that blog. To be at all useful, the content you post must follow your brand guidelines, be well written and properly proofread, feature photos and other visual graphics to break up blocks of text, and be timely, unique, and engaging.
That’s where we can help. If you’re interested in getting your Shopify blog off the ground or even revamping your existing site, click here to reach out. Our experts will help you get your website on the radar in all the best ways and increase site traffic through high quality, relevant content.
Happy blogging!
