Funny thing: For all of the online proclamations of “Content is King,” you would think that most business owners with enough savvy to have a website would have caught on by now. But that’s sadly not the case. Many businesses still don’t have a blog, and if they do, it’s usually a non-updated, abandoned piece of web space that’s drier than the Sahara. And even if the blog is updated on a regular basis, the posts are usually fluffed-up, canned articles that accomplish close to nothing. The average small business blog suffers from more neglect than an abandoned, haunted house.
Why Content Matters
When someone first visits your site, they are impressed upon two things:
- The design of the website
- The content of the website
The first one is self-explanatory. If you have a design that looks like it was yanked right out of 1998 then your visitors will be repulsed. A clean, modern design will help pique their interest in your site. And if the design has them interested, then your content must maintain and strengthen that interest. Content is what keeps your visitors on your site, and it is what compels them to keep coming back. This is very powerful. Whether your content is good or bad can be the deal-breaker in converting a visitor of your website into a long-lasting customer.
Why eCommerce and Good Content Go Hand in Hand
For the rest of this post, we’re going to look at how having a blog for your ecommerce site is a powerful ingredient to maximizing sales. The overall goal of an ecommerce site is to sell products. Getting visitors to your site, having a nice design, good pricing strategies, and the quality of the product itself will help you to accomplish this.
Now, the overall goal of a your blog is to build credibility. The objective is not to make the reader laugh. It is not for show. It is not there to elicit an emotional reaction. If you can entertain the reader, fine, but that is neither here nor there. Your goal is to build a sturdy perception of power and authority. You need to develop trust. One of the most potent ways to persuade your readers to open their wallets and to be a long-lasting supporter of your business is to cultivate trust. If they know your product is capable, and they know that you are trustworthy, the largest barrier, which is fear, will be removed. Enabling trust is what will extinguish the doubt (fear) they have in your company.
How to Create Good Content
Creating a good content is all about balance. The tone of the website will help to achieve that balance. Here are few good tips on how to develop and master the tone of your website:
Know who your audience is. You need to start determining the demographics. Figure out the type of person who frequently visits your site. Whether it’s a middle-aged mother, undergrad college student, an elderly person, or a young professional (these are just examples), tailor the thematic content of your blog with them in mind.
Once you know who is visiting your site, research their wants and needs. Why is that person visiting your site? If your site is ecommerce, what is that visitor looking to buy? Why is he looking to buy it? What product sells the most on your site? After answering those questions, start writing relevant blog posts that deal with their wants and needs.
How you write your posts is important. This is where balance is paramount. As a general rule, keep your sentences short, unless it’s necessary to stretch them out. You’re not trying to impress your readers with your writing talents. Craft the prose so a 5th grader could read it. But don’t write like a 5th grader.
With those tips in mind, let’s talk about a few final things. You want viral content. That means that you want your content shared across multiple social media platforms. This will also generate new leads because your viral content acts as a siphon for new visitors to your website. Now, crafting viral content is all about value. Not much value can be extracted from a fluffy 200 word blog post. When you write (or have others write for you), you need your knowledge to be robust and unequivocal. Giving valuable information that helps the reader is how you become an authority in your niche, and it is more likely for the content to go viral. Give valuable tips, don’t be dull, have meat in your posts.
Don’t be the average business owner whose website is among the walking dead. You can bring your site to life by incorporating a solid blogging strategy.
The audience and content you post are definitely strongly linked and an important factor. It’s important to focus on writing what your audience wants, not what you find the most entertaining/interesting. (Although if you can combine them, bonus points!)
I agree. I think it’s about finding out what your audience will gravitate towards. There are ways you can mix what you like with what they may want as a whole. I also think the key to having a blog with your e – commerce site is realizing that it’s okay to provide comparison charts with customer reviews as a searchable item. Some consumers need a a personal experience associated with the item in order to make a final decision. There are quite a few things that are required in order to create an aspect of connection with your audience influencing them to follow your blog and seek your site as more than just a store but a variable mecca of information on the topic.
There usually are pretty good reasons people don’t keep their blog updated. First is a possible lack of content/writing which is where this post comes in handy for sure. It’s hard to keep a promotional blog going even if you know what your target audience is and what they’re looking for. The ever-growing number of blogs trying to expand also soaks up the market and it’s harder and harder to get consistent hits on a website. It definitely is worth doing, but I can see why it’s so common to see abandoned blogs for businesses
I agree with you completely. New businesses whom are trying to focus on providing a great service often times don’t have time to go back and blog about then nuts or bolts of their niche. There are proficient and fantastic writers out there who can provide the service of creating the custom content to maintain your authority blog but you get caught in this rut where you find it a job to find someone to take that job over for your business because you want to make sure the integrity of your business is being demonstrated while maintaining a specific voice. Keeping an updated blog is important to secure validity with Google and keep the audience whom don’t have the pleasure of being in your business’s location close to you. If you need help keeping it updated let me know, I have a few writer friends whom can help out.
There’s a lot of really helpful advice in this post, especially since Big G’s algorithms are constantly updated in order to favor quality content over spammy, fluffy articles that the reader doesn’t really derive any value from. Once you’ve got a solid grasp of your audience it becomes much easier to provide them with the information they actually want, which keeps them coming back for more and in turn increases your page ranking. I’ll definitely be implementing some of these ideas in to my blogger blogs, thanks!
Indeed, when you create an authority blog, people will likely return there as a default before searching Google, sometimes they won’t even search Google at all if you have delivered the content they are looking for.
Only the best authority blogs can really generate a sufficient amount of word-of-mouth advertising too, through recommendations. Which is both free and passive.
Sure having a good blog will help you be an authority on a subject, but are ecommerce sites even making money anymore? Before Amazon, eBay and every other brick and mortar store got an online presence, ecommerce was the place to be. Now it seems like the closest you can come to being a online store is being an affiliate of one of the big boys.
I have to agree with you. There are a few mom and pop ecommerce shops that haven’t sold out to larger companies but you also see that some of the smaller businesses are mixing their products with those of other brands to become that one stop shop allowing them to pull in some additional income from affiliate sales. Sites like Etsy have opened that door to those who don’t want to set up an an entire ecommerce site, but want to get their products out there. I think there smaller sites are able to make an impression it’s just a little more work that goes behind it with building the brand up socially while maintaining the authentic appeal that influenced your business from the beginning.
Thanks for sharing this informative write up. I really do appreciate. I will work on doing something better with my blog now.
Yes, having a working blog is one of the most often ignored SEO tips out there. I think it happens because most webmasters feel they don’t have enough things to share or write about. Which is false. There are always many aspects of your business you can write about thus engaging your users and showing that you know what your trade is about (authority building).
Very true. There are so many dynamics to a specific subject that you are able to cover, it leaves an endless avenue of information to present to your audience. I think a few of the business owners whom aren’t used to taking over the dynamics of social media fail to appreciate the resource of information an authentic writer can bring to the table. If social media marketing or creating authentic content isn’t a passion of the business owner, I think it’s only appropriate to employ someone whom can put in the time and research to capture an audience on behalf of the company.