While merchants are desperately looking for ways to drive more traffic to their stores, they tend to ignore blogging. Why? Probably because blogging on eCommerce is more of a long-term investment.
You won’t see results immediately as you start. It’s true. But if you want to introduce yourself to new customers and grow your community, there’s no better tool.
Nonetheless, it’s just the tip of the iceberg of eCommerce blog benefits. We’ll cover more of them today. You’ll see that starting a blog is quick, easy, and profitable for your store, regardless of the products you sell.
Those of you who manage Magento or Shopify stores will also find ready-made blogging solutions.
What Is a Business Blog?
A business blog is a blog on a company website where you can publish articles about your products, news, and other information to drive more traffic and sales correspondingly.
You can see that as a way to communicate with your customers. But from a business standpoint, it’s a part of your content marketing strategy where you create target content to drive targeted traffic.
Top 8 Benefits of an eCommerce Blog
So let's take a closer look at how a blog can benefit your online store.
1. Increased website traffic
This one is pretty straightforward. The more you write the more traffic you create right? Not entirely true though. It’s best to say that if you target the right keywords with your blog posts, you’ll attract the right people.
That’s the benefit of an eCommerce blog that can’t be overestimated. It’s free marketing too. You just need to use it properly to drive results.
Moreover, companies that blog significantly increase the number of leads. And therefore have more sales.
2. Better SEO
Creating more content helps you target more keywords. This builds a “wider” SEO picture for your websites and increases overall rankings.
As long as you give Google what it loves most — useful content — it will keep driving you clicks.
Besides, everyone knows that the best traffic is free traffic. And there’s plenty of it coming from the search engines. Taking that you use it the right way.
3. Live community
Your blog is not just a list of articles — it’s a community. Your customers can leave reactions, and comments and share their opinions about a topic.
This allows you to engage with your audience, build trust, and understand what they really need. So, you can tailor your products to the customer's preferences and craft better content.
Example of the discussion in blog comments
4. Recognizable brand voice
Unfortunately, writing only website copy and product descriptions doesn’t help you show your brand voice. But that’s what eCommerce blogs are for.
You can write a long-form copy to educate, entertain, and inform your audience. The blog gives you a voice you can use to build trust and establish yourself as an industry expert.
People are going to recognize your brand if it resonates with them through your voice.
5. Loyal audience
The main purpose of an eCommerce blog is to educate, inform and entertain. But the most important of them all — is to solve problems.
If you help people solve their problems in your blog, they will believe that your product could solve them too.
This way, through informative articles, your content inspires trust, which leads to more purchases in the long run.
6. Promotion of your products
Once you build a community of people who trust your brand, you’ll see the blog bringing in not only more traffic but more sales.
You can even double that if you start blogging about your products or offering solutions to well-known problems. Opportunities are limitless.
Just remember to be useful rather than promotional. People don’t like that.
Related products at the bottom of the blog post
7. Additional ways of marketing
eCommerce blogs can be used to complement other marketing practices. Or even generate tons of new content across multiple channels.
Explore the opportunities to:
- repurpose your blog content through social media networks
- send newsletters with posts or store news
- create videos and podcasts from your posts
- craft guides and ebooks combining multiple posts about the same topic
8. Partnerships with influencers or brands
Finally, an eCommerce blog helps you cooperate with other brands. It exposes your brand to a new audience and generates more traffic.
You get an audience that might not know about your products or would not have considered them otherwise.
However, that’s not just it. If you get a link back to your store from an authoritative website, this signals that you’re authoritative too. Search engines love that.
How to Create a Blog That Drives Traffic?
Now that you know how important blogging on eCommerce is, let's discuss some tips for getting the most out of it.
The main task is to create impactful content. So, we’ll start there.
Step 1: Place your blog properly
Find a spot to place your blog. Remember that it must be easily reachable — from your homepage or a separate website section.
The latter is used the most often since it's the easiest way to reach your blog. Users need easy access through the navigation on your home page or a separate tab.
Example of the blog homepage (separate blog section)
Step 2: Think of content goals and strategies
You can’t just write whatever you want in your blog. If you want it to drive the required traffic you need a plan.
So, think about the results you want to get and take the necessary steps to achieve them.
After all, blog content is the glue that connects your target audience's problems with your business's solutions.
Find relevant keywords and research topics covering them. That’s the best way to start.
Step 3: Find your topics
Your content shouldn't focus only on your company and products. Consider creating content that is generally relevant to your audience and industry.
These can be how-to guides, lifestyle articles, and tutorials. You can also tell your own story by sharing your clients' journey to success, development challenges, and achievements.
This allows you to attract a larger audience since your blog isn't just cold hard facts. It's a connection you build between you and your customers.
Step 4: Do research
The journey doesn't stop once you know what you'd like to write about. Planning an eCommerce blog is more than that.
Do some research to find out what topics your audience is interested in. Where to start? The competitors!
Explore what your competition is doing, read about the recent industry news and find out everything you can about your target topic.
Example of the keyword research filtered on the high volume keywords
It may seem like you're copying them since you're covering the same topic. But it's not like that.
Your competitors might be missing something. Cover more information, and dig out more interesting facts to make your content stand out.
Step 5: Think of quality
Be attentive when doing the research. You shouldn't focus on creating multiple pieces of content since your competitors are going so.
High-quality content must be a priority for you, especially if you're just starting. Focus on the topics your target audience is interested in. Publish really helpful and interesting information that answers their query.
Besides, make your articles easy to read and include related articles and products if there are any.
Step 6: Pay attention to design
Make sure your blog is visually appealing. It is much more interesting to read a blog with an attractive design and various videos, pictures, or interactive elements.
Choose an attractive layout with lots of navigation elements like a sidebar, search bar, recent posts or categories. This improves navigation and keeps your readers engaged.
Step 7: Post and share consistently
If you post consistently, you create a large collection of articles for your readers to explore.
Besides, consistent publishing helps you create a predictable content schedule for your social media channels or newsletter.
You can even use the latter to reach out to prospects and offer some of your products through engaging emails.
How to Choose a Blogging Tool?
As promised, there already are established blogging tools for Magento and Shopify users. So you don’t have to look for them if you use these platforms.
They save time, and effort, and make blogging on eCommerce a breeze. Let’s review them in more detail.
Magento 2 Blog Extension
is a robust marketing tool that helps you boost your store SEO, attract new customers, and maintain a professional blog directly within the Magento admin.
In fact, this is the most popular blog extension out there with more than 1 600 000 installs. This number keeps on growing because of the variety of features this tool offers.
Magento Blog category page
This Blog Extension for Magento is not limited to creating and managing blog posts, categories and authors.
It comes with outstanding design settings, customizable URLs, extensive SEO options, and anything else a blogger might need to create outstanding content.
Moreover, this Blog Extension can literally create blogs for you with the smart AI blog writer.
Magento Blog AI writer settings
We promise, that it'll help you on your journey to professional blogging in eCommerce. Stop relying on WordPress or any other third-party platform when you have a Magefan Blog that attracts, engages, and converts!
Shopify Blog App
is a solution that will replace the built-in blog and skyrocket your traffic. This blogging solution has all you need to manage a successful blog on Shopify without relying on a subdomain or multiple different add-ons.
It does so many things default Shopify blog can't do, starting with blog categories and authors. Then you can also choose any from the 22+ template for your blog homepage and lists to manage design.
Blog author page in Shopify Blog
But there's more. Magefan Blog for Shopify keeps your readers engaged with related posts and products. Moreover, you can communicate with them through three types of comments.
These and multiple other features for hassle-free blog management and driving results. Opportunities are limitless.
Just remember to follow the best recommendations for creating an engaging blog. It will bring all the benefits eCommerce blog has to offer. But don't forget that a reliable blogging solution can be of great help in your journey. Choose it wisely.
