A successful ecommerce blogging strategy can increase traffic to your website, improve engagement with your target audience, and drive more sales.
How?
When you create quality content around keywords associated with your products — ones your target market cares about — then you create a pipeline of organic traffic to your website.
That means to maximize your ecommerce blogging strategy, you need to combine it with SEO best practices so you have the best shot at reaching potential customers when they most want your products.
In this post, I’ll share why you need to start blogging and walk you through creating an ecommerce blogging strategy that incorporates content optimization. Simply go through the steps with your target audience and business goals in mind, and start reaping the benefits of your new plan sooner rather than later.
Why Make Blogging for Ecommerce a Part of Your Marketing Strategy?
Not sold on the power of the blog yet? Consider the following benefits.
1. Improves Search Engine Rankings
Search engines like Google prioritize websites that consistently publish fresh, high-quality content. By regularly updating your blog with informative articles that incorporate relevant keywords, you can improve your site’s search engine rankings, making it more likely that potential customers will discover your store through organic search.
2. Attracts Your Target Audience
A well-crafted blog post can attract your target audience by addressing their specific pain points. By providing content that resonates with your ideal customer, you can increase the likelihood that they’ll engage with your brand and become a loyal customer.
3. Showcases Expertise in Your Niche
Blogging allows you to demonstrate your knowledge and expertise in your niche, positioning your brand as an authority in the industry. By sharing valuable insights, tips, and advice, you can earn the trust of your audience, which can have a downstream impact on revenue.
4. Addresses Customer Concerns
An informative blog can serve as a platform to address common customer concerns and questions. By providing answers and solutions to these issues, you can instill confidence in your products or services, and further establish your brand’s credibility.
5. Provides Valuable Information and Solutions
By offering valuable content that helps your customers solve problems or improve their lives, you can foster a deeper connection with your audience. This can lead to increased customer engagement, as they are more likely to share, comment on, and interact with your content.
6. Creates a Sense of Community
A blog can help create a sense of community around your brand, encouraging customers to feel more connected and engaged with your business. Regularly publishing content that speaks to your audience’s interests and values can encourage them to see your brand as a trusted partner and resource.
How To Create an Ecommerce Blogging Content Calendar
Developing a content calendar for your ecommerce blog can help you stay organized, plan ahead, and ensure that you’re consistently publishing high-quality content. Follow these steps and best practices to create a content calendar that supports your blogging goals.
Step 1: Define Your Target Audience
Before you start creating content, you need to have a clear understanding of who your target audience is. Develop a detailed buyer persona that outlines your ideal customer’s demographics, interests, needs, and pain points.
Take the time to research and understand the needs and preferences of your target audience. This might involve analyzing customer data, conducting surveys, or monitoring social media conversations. By understanding what your audience is looking for, you can create content that genuinely resonates with them and encourages them to engage with your brand.
Step 2: Set Content Goals
Before developing your content calendar, establish clear goals that align with your overall marketing strategy. These goals might include increasing brand awareness, driving more traffic to your website, generating leads, or improving customer retention. By setting specific objectives, you can ensure your content efforts are focused and impactful.
For example, suppose your primary goal is to increase brand awareness. In that case, you might prioritize creating content that showcases your brand’s unique selling points, such as your commitment to sustainability or your innovative product features. If your goal is lead generation, you could develop content that educates potential customers about your products or services and encourages them to sign up for your email list or request a quote.
Step 3: Brainstorm Post Ideas
To create pieces that appeal to your target audience, brainstorm topics that relate to their needs. You can gather ideas from various sources, such as customer feedback, industry trends, and competitor analysis. Keep a running list of potential blog post topics and update it regularly as new ideas come to mind.
When planning your content calendar, consider incorporating seasonal trends and industry updates. For example, if you sell outdoor equipment, you could create content that shares camping trips during the summer months and skiing advice in the winter. Of course, that means you should be planning that content a few months ahead of those seasons. This approach can help keep your content fresh and relevant, and encourage readers to return to your blog throughout the year.
AI Tip: You can use ChatGPT to help you come up with topics. Just use one of these ChatGPT prompts.
At this point, you’ll also want to integrate SEO into your process. Doing so will help you reach the goals you set in step 2.
Once you have some topic ideas, have your SEO team conduct keyword research to identify what phrases you should target and which posts to prioritize.
Step 4: Schedule Content
Next, consider what a reasonable posting frequency looks like given your goals and resources. Depending on those resources, you may need to adjust your goals. For example, if you can only post once every two weeks, it’s going to take you a longer time to increase your organic traffic.
Keep the following in mind when picking a frequency:
- Who will be doing your keyword research? How long will it take them to complete this for you?
- Who will be outlining and briefing your posts? How much notice do they need and how long will it take them to complete each task?
- Who will be writing your posts? How much prep time do they need and how long will it take them to draft each article? Will different articles require different amounts of time? (Hint: That last answer is undoubtedly yes. More in-depth articles will take longer to create. Keep this in mind when scheduling!)
- How will you QA or edit your posts? Can the same person do this task, or will it require two individuals? How long will each task take?
- Will you need unique visuals? How can you incorporate that into your process? How long will each image request take?
Once you have those answers — or at least a general timeline — you can determine how long it will take a post to go from ideation to ready to publish. This timeline will vary depending on what your topic is. Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) topics will require more in-depth research and QA to ensure they’re accurate and reliable.
Now that you have an estimate of how long post creation will take, start plugging your content ideas into a calendar. You may not be able to publish your first post for a month, and that’s ok. Quality over quantity, always. Focus on consistency and information gain — give your readers something they aren’t finding elsewhere.
Step 5: Assign Resources and Responsibilities
Now, let’s dive into the content creation process. While there are plenty of one-person content teams out there, if you want to publish quality posts frequently, you’ll probably need help. This may mean outsourcing your content creation to an SEO content writing service or working with freelancers to supplement your own productivity.
Assign clear roles and responsibilities to anyone you collaborate with to ensure everyone is on the same page and working towards the same goals.
Develop a workflow that streamlines the content creation, optimization, and distribution process. This might involve using project management tools, creating editorial guidelines, or establishing a review and approval process if you don’t have something in place. By optimizing your content workflow, you can save time and ensure that your content is consistently top-notch.
Measuring & Analyzing Your Ecommerce Blogging Efforts
As you publish your content, you’ll want to monitor performance to gauge the effectiveness of your efforts and pivot your content strategy as necessary to better align it with your business goals. You can use tools like Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Ahrefs, and Semrush to assess important metrics like organic traffic, engagement, conversions, and keyword rankings.
Regularly analyze your KPIs to identify which content pieces are performing well and which are underperforming. Use these insights to adjust your content strategy and focus on creating more of the content that resonates with your audience. (Once you have enough content, you can even audit it.)
Kick Off Your Ecommerce Blog Quickly
Now is the time to harness the power of blogging for your ecommerce business. By following the steps and best practices outlined in this article, you can create a content calendar that sets your online store up for long-term success. Remember, the benefits of blogging extend far beyond immediate sales, as a well-executed content strategy can help you build a loyal customer base and position your brand as an industry leader. Get started quickly with more content tips in our free ebook, or talk to our team about our SEO content writing services.
SEO Content Guide
Are you ready to rank? Download this ebook & learn how to craft content that hits the top spot in Google Search.
