If you have made it to this web page, you are likely looking at how you can begin incorporating organic written content into your current eCommerce website. Luckily, you have come to the right place. In this blog, we will be discussing the basics of written content marketing, as well as how you can begin blogging on your own Shopify store.
Sit down and strap in, we are going to get you up to speed with blogging on Shopify.
Are You A Current Shopify Retailer?
Shopify retailers have a head start amongst many of their competitors by hosting their eCommerce store on one of the most widely used platforms that are available to merchants today. Since so many of the confusing technical headaches are solved from the very beginning, retailers can focus on what makes their business special. The single largest non-technical problem that eCommerce retailers face is standing out from the pack online in order to attract new visitors to their site.
Paid Media Marketing vs. Organic Content Marketing
Marketing content can be divided into two “category buckets”. The first of these categories is paid media. Paid media encompasses advertisements across the Google Search & Display Networks, Bing Ad Network, as well as Social Media platforms. Paid media is a great way to get your products and services in front of potential customers, quickly. Unfortunately, it is difficult to ensure that your advertising dollars are being spent where they will yield the best results.
To overcome the issue of showing advertisements to uninterested users, we recommend implementing an organic content marketing. By creating organic content related to the topics that you are an expert on, you can draw real customers to your brand without spending precious marketing dollars on paid ads. One of the most effective forms of organic content are blogs.
For more information regarding the benefits and challenges that organic and paid advertising have, read our previous blog on the subject.
Why Blogging?
History of Blogs
Blogging was one of the first internet crazes of the 1990s and early 2000s in which the average person could contribute; both as a writer and a reader/commenter. Blogging started out as a publicly available online journal for many - originally being recognized as an abbreviation for the term ‘Weblog”. While online journaling in written form has become less common, blogging is still used as the most often used industry term to describe written organic content on the internet.
The Customer’s Journey
We have made it to the big question; How does blogging actually help Shopify retailers increase sales from their online store?
When imagining your customer’s journey, you will want to provide them will content that is relevant to the questions or concerns that they may have along the way. Suppose you sell specialized pool chemicals which provide the same results as standard chemicals but do not cause the negative effects on skin and hair that standard chemicals do. In this example, a potential customer who hears about your brand for the first time may be weary that your brand has other unforeseen health issues, or may not be as effective as other brands.
In order to overcome the customer’s mental blocks, you could create written content with titles such as “Pool Chemical Alternatives for This Summer” or “Switch From Harsh Pool Chemicals Easily”. This way, when a customer is searching the web for content of this kind, they will come across your brand's website.
Establish Yourself As An Industry Expert
The most crucial benefit of creating organic content in this way is that the potential customer will trust you as an expert in your industry after reading your brand's blogs. This will help to alleviate any pre-purchase weariness that the customer has before completing a transaction. Remember how I mentioned creating content for each stage of your buyer's journey? Once the customer has received their product, they should be able to locate relevant articles and blogs to assist them in properly using the product or service purchased.
Blogging on Shopify
If you are a current Shopify retailer without a blog, you have probably determined that now is the time to begin the blogging section of your website. Luckily, with Shopify this process is very simple.
All Shopify Plus stores come with a free blog page automatically integrated with your website. Retailers can choose from a variety of customizable templates that can be modified to match the exact look and feel of your brand. Creating a singular user interface improves your website’s user experience - which streamlines your customer’s journey. Learn more about the technical aspects of launching your blog from Shopify's support page.
Create A Plan
Before blindly writing content for your website - you will need to design a plan with the topic clusters you will create content around. As part of this plan, you will need to decide how often you intend to publish your content and what the creation process will look like. A typical blog will need to be researched, outlined, drafted, reviewed, modified, published, and backlinked. This may sound like a lot of work, but can be completed in a single day if all team members are clear of their expectations and work diligently.
Take Action
The Final step in blogging on Shopify is to take action. Marketing has always been an iterative process, and you will get trapped in “analysis paralysis” if you don't begin generating and publishing content at some point.
If your company needs assistance in its current marketing efforts, like setting up an attention-grabbing blog in order to drive sales, reach out to our team of eCommerce experts below. We have helped countless eCommerce brands expand their reach through both organic and paid content marketing.
via https://www.aiupnow.com
spencer@groovecommerce.com (Spencer Flaherty), Khareem Sudlow
