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How Blogging is Essential to Ecommerce Success

ecommerce bloggingWhen trying to sell products and grow your online business, taking time to write out blog posts can seem counterintuitive. Wouldn't that time be better spent optimizing your ecommerce SEO, or finding vendors to sell your products using daily deals?

There's a lot of different marketing elements that can improve the success of your ecommerce strategy, but blogging has fallen by the wayside in recent years compared to the excitement of social media. Is blogging still worth it when those hours can be spent designing a promotional email or interacting with followers on Twitter?

The short answer is yes, it's definitely still worth it to be blogging in today's ecommerce environment. Alright, blog over! Fine, you want some more. Here's a few reasons it's essential that you keep blogging for your ecommerce site.

Keeping Up With The Times

People like to see a company is keeping their site content fresh. You ever see a site with a footer that still says "Copyright XYZ Company 2015?" They lose so much credibility instantly by proving they don't even care enough about their site to keep it updated year over year. Writing regular blogs, even just every couple of weeks, shows people that you are creatively coming with new content, updating your site, and thinking of ways youcan provide interesting value to the reader. That builds trust before they even start looking to buy.

Google Loves Your Blog

You know how Google works. If you don't, here's a handy primer to SEO. Every blog you write gives you a chance to create some quality content around a keyword and topic relevant to your business. When you optimize that blog correctly, it's going to help your search engine ranking long after people stop reading it. The battle for rankings can mean the different between growing your business and shutting the doors forever, so taking your ecommerce SEO seriously is just part of why blogging is so important.

You Get To Tell Your Story

Odds are, your product isn't one-in-a-million. Don't be offended, it's hard to offer something completely unique in 2017. Setting yourself apart from your competition isn't just about your search ranking or price point, it's about creating a compelling relationship between your brand and the customer. Why did you start your company? What are your values? What are the stories that shaped your life and made this your passion? Answer those questions and craft those tales and share it with your audience. Pulling back the curtain and showcasing the people and passion that drives your business helps humanize your brand and build trust. Flat out: people like buying from people they like. Making your brand engaging and relatable is easy for anyone to do through a blog, and in a longer and more permanent format than a tweet or Instagram post.

It's Not All About You (or your store)

The mistake I see from a lot of ecommerce blogs is that they are too focused on promoting their products and not the lifestyle that goes with them. Anyone can wax poetic about their product, but that's not going to grow sales. Showing what you can do with the product connects it to the ways people will actually use the product in their lives. Talk about the music festivals that your target audience would enjoy going to, or a how-to blog for one of the most common uses of your product. Better yet: make a video and embed it so you can show people yourself. 

It's Not Either/Or

Writing blogs for your ecommerce site doesn't have to replace the exhilerating fun of posting on social media. Blogs give you more content to share on social, and big batches of content you can repurpose for shareable images on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram with key quotes, stats, or facts from the blog. Smart promotional strategy involves quality blog posts and consistent social outreach. Sending people to your site through social won't be much use if you don't have content that proves value to them, and writing incredible blogs is a waste if you don't have avenues to draw relevant traffic to read them. In 2017, you can and must do both.

If you still think blogging is a tedious chore, you aren't thinking creatively enough. Take it from us: after years of writing thousands for blogs for dozens of different client, no matter what your business is or does, you can write interesting blogs. Know who you are trying to reach and sell to, what they are like, and what they are interested in, and you can craft content they will care about. Start small with a blog every two weeks and you can start consistently writing content that helps your SEO rankings, keeps your site new and relevant, and engages your brand with your customers.

Read our guide on creating a best-practice ecommerce ecosystem