Right before I began working here I started a personal blog to investigate the entrepreneurship scene in Philadelphia, called philapreneur.com. I also write the blog for 1Digital, and I am the editor for all the content our copywriting team creates for our eCommerce clients.
I’m no stranger to writing and getting articles published, as I’ve written plenty of content as a journalist and a communications director of a market research house in charge of engendering awareness and discussion of a new study.
But when I entered the blogging world, I understood that there was an entirely new set of rules to learn that went far beyond the shape and quality of prose. And even more unique are the guidelines for eCommerce blogs. When you survey which activities must be performed to acquire and grow a following, the content you write and the way you write it account for only a fraction of the pertinent tasks; utilizing social media makes up a significant slice of the pie.
I’ll divide my recommendations into two categories: internal and external activities. What you need to do within the blog involves everything that makes visitors keep reading once they’ve started. External activities simply get prospects to your blog.
Internal
It makes the most sense to start our focus on the content itself. After all, even the best marketing strategy does nothing for a store with empty shelves.
Don’t over optimize. If you have someone else writing your blog, an SEO team, for example, be sure to proofread and approve all content before publishing it on your site. Over-optimized content is no fun to read and does nothing to keep visitors coming back. SEO is important when you produce content, but Google’s algorithms are always getting smarter, so it’s best to write with the reader in mind than to try to ingratiate search crawlers.
Have an identity. If someone on staff is writing the blog, have their byline link to a photo and a quick bio of who they are. People want to follow content written by a real person they can connect with. If you outsource content generation, you might want to consider using them as ghost writers so you can still use someone real to associate with the content, perhaps whoever is editing or approving the posts.
Have a voice. You want content that is fun to read as much as it is informative. Pepper in some humor, and make sure to add a personal perspective whenever appropriate. Don’t be afraid to talk about mistakes you’ve made and the resulting lessons you’ve learned, as this will add to your credibility.
Be honest. Readers have a sixth sense in detective a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Once you lose your credibility, it is difficult if not impossible to regain it.
Be helpful. Don’t try to sell your product in every post. People don’t subscribe to blogs to be sold items, they do it to be entertained, informed, and exposed to valuable offers.
Be consistent. From both loyalty and SEO standpoints, producing quality content regularly is a must. If you don’t update your blog at least twice per month, no one is going to get into the habit of revisiting it.
For eCommerce websites, building a following is especially important as you are a B2C business and depend on repeat customers. 1Digital is a B2B site, and as such doesn’t have the same incentive to build a following. Apart from our digital marketing services like SEO and PPC, once a client has us build them a website, their interaction with us ceases and it doesn’t make much sense to continue communicating with them on a regular basis. If I run a warehouse and just bought a $17,000 air conditioning system, I have no reason to follow the A/C manufacturer’s blog to stay on top of their latest offers, models, and industry news. But if I sell clothing to customers, I need to establish a rapport and a relationship to my customers to keep them coming back.
External
Once you’ve created a few quality posts for readers to chew on, it’s time to plug in and get the word out.
Get used to social media. I’m not going to go into too much detail about how to use social media effectively, because it is a very deep topic on it’s own. Facebook and Twitter are the two platforms which will yield the most interaction with consumers. Pinterest and Instagram are also great for B2C businesses, so be sure to learn about those as well. If updating and interacting through four different platforms seems overwhelming, I suggest using a social media interface like Hootsuite, which lets you send out a message to all of your social media platforms through one dashboard. It does a lot more than that but I’ll let you explore it on your own. You can also set up your blog to automatically send messages out whenever a new post is published.
Connect to the community. Guest posting is a great and effective way to harness the power of networking in the blogosphere. Offer to write a quality post for a reputable and relevant blog in your industry, and use their readership to get your site traffic through the links you incorporate. Allow others to guest post on your blog as well to return the favor and give your own readers some diversity.
Start a mailing list. Most people don’t spend a lot of time focusing on this, which is why you should. These are indispensable for eCommerce blogs.
Post at the right time. Pay attention to when our traffic spikes and post accordingly to get the most out of your efforts.
Diversify your media. Try to switch it up to keep things fresh. Among the best kinds of posts are how-to articles, controversial opinions, trade secrets, limited and valuable offers, infographics, slideshows, videos, and top 5 lists.
I’ve only scratched the surface of making quality content. It takes time to build a following and become a thought leader in your industry. It’s a bit like working out though. If you have a good trainer, you simply have to trust that what he or she is instructing you to do will give you the results you desire, because you have to put in a ton of work before you can quantify any changes. But I assure you, if you follow the steps above, create top-shelf content and participate actively and consistently in social media, you’ll see your level of repeat customers skyrocket.