I understand that starting an eCommerce store can seem to be quite an uphill struggle at first. But, there are two very basic things. First, you need to attract an initial traffic to your Shopify site and second, you need to make sure that this traffic lasts. Blogging on Shopify can generate that most desirable traffic on your online store and – luckily – without spending any marketing dollars. While most of you understand the importance of acquiring a constant flow of organic traffic, most of you shy away from adding a blog to your Shopify websites.
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I am sure that most Shopify merchants did not even ask them the critical question; “can I blog on Shopify?”. That is why many eCommerce businesses still don’t have their Shopify blog page up and running. And the few who do, don’t care to update it regularly. The reason for this apathy is simple! I know that you still have some question marks and many of you believe that “There is no need for Blogging on Shopify when the main objective of the online shop is to nudge purchases.”
WRONG!!
The main objective of realizing sales is also the very reason you need the Shopify Blog Feature. Today, people have a zillion options to choose from, on the online marketplace. And the only way to draw their attention towards your store is to convince them that you are the best. You may offer discounts or offers to lure them into buying your products; but, if they don’t trust you as a brand, they will move away in no time. And that’s what exactly blogging on Shopify does – it establishes trust in the hearts and minds of your customers.
How does blogging on Shopify boost the profitability of your eCommerce Store?
If everything I have said about blogging on shopify till now doesn’t convince you, here are some arguments that might.
- Shopify Blogging Creates Awareness
One of the primary reasons you must be blogging on Shopify or add blogs to your Shopify store is to raise awareness of what you sell. Remember, that every time you write a Shopify blog post, is an interaction with your prospective customers, telling them something about your store and how they are going to benefit from your products. Not only that; when people like your Shopify blogs, they tend to share it with others on social media – amplifying your reach. Either way, it creates a lot of awareness of your brand.
- Customizing Your Shopify Blog With Keywords Ups Your SEO Game
Unlike other websites, eCommerce stores have very little scope for incorporating keywords (except in product descriptions and technical specifications), if it were not for blogs. And keywords, as we all know are the backbones of Search Engine Optimization.
Search Engine bots have two key functions – crawling content and building index. That is how they provide answers to millions of searches made every second on the internet with such a high relevance and accuracy. It is these searches that eCommerce sites can target through their Shopify blogs. When you provide informative, relevant and valuable content regularly, it gets indexed well. And your products start ranking on top of your competitors. The best Shopify blogs do not let this opportunity go. In fact, some topics from these posts continue to remain relevant for months, resulting in an ongoing stream of traffic for days to come.
- Your Shopify Blog Categories Add Richness and Build Trust
Whether it is a simple tips and tricks, a how-to guide, some industry news, or a sneak peek inside your company culture – everything helps you in building a rapport with your target audience. When you add a blog to your Shopify store, you are then seen as an industry expert, who is on top of his game — someone who knows what they are doing and can be trusted. Shopify blogs help create trust, and help people to see your brand as a credible one.
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People want to know what goes on behind that website of yours. They want to know what you think, and they would definitely not mind getting some useful guidance and information about your products and get some questions answered. Shopify blogging addresses all these concerns.
- Marketing Shopify Blog Posts Is Cost-Effective
No matter how big your marketing budget is, blogs have historically proven to be a cost effective form of marketing. When you promote or share your Shopify blog posts on social media channels, they bring in a regular stream of social traffic.
Another benefit of blogging on Shopify or having a blog is being able to share more on social media. When you operate social media channels, you often end up with the problem of finding relevant content. Writing regularly also solves this issue as it creates a rich library of authentic content that you can regularly share on your social media channels.
- Having a Shopify Blog Page Creates Call-To-Action
When you are blogging with Shopify regularly, you open new avenues to tap into a consumer’s mind in ways that most of your competitors aren’t even aware of. You not only have your prospective customers’ attention, but also are in a position to direct them wherever you want – for instance, to different product pages. On the other hand, when you’re blogging about something like new industry trends or success stories from your customers, you are bringing your readers one step closer to becoming customers. And then, throughout the content of your blog, you can use a “call to action” to direct them to one of your product pages after you have fine-tuned their minds in making a purchase.
How to create a Blog on Shopify?
Shopify makes it quite easy for their users to create a blog on their stores. With different and attractive Shopify blog themes, the Shopify blog app, and with the capability and convenience to customize Shopify blogs, it is quite straight forward to start a Shopify blog. What seems daunting however, is to find the ideas you need to do it consistently.
Starting a Shopify blog involves the following steps, which we’ll explore one by one later in the article with some Shopify blog examples to help you understand what we mean:
- Pick a Niche
- Choose a blogging platform, a domain name, and build your Shopify blog.
- Pick a Name and theme for your Shopify Blog
- Plan a strategy for distribution.
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Pick a niche
It’s hard to stand out amidst the content overload on the internet. But it is not impossible. Here are a couple of quick ideas to start with:
- Focus on a particular location
- Focus on a specific segment of a large category
- Choose a particular tone/voice for your content (e.g. Humor)
- Go deep on a particular topic (for instance, write stuff no one else is writing on a general topic)
The niche you choose is important because it will not only help you remain focused on one thing rather than getting distracted, but it will be easier for you to come up with content ideas, because you exactly know what to address. Once you have some ideas, you could use Google to look up for some keywords that are used by your competitors and get a sense of how well the different contents on this topic are performing on the Internet.
Here is a good example of a Shopify blog page who are blogging on Shopify:
This company sells pillows, bath linens, luxury sheets etc. – in short, everything you need to help you get a good night’s sleep. Their Shopify blog aligns with the same thought, offering helpful articles that discuss in detail how their readers can improve their sleep quality. The content is directly relevant to both their target audience and their products. This creates an immediate advantage as the readers who click through and read these articles are already inclined to buy from that store. They write about what duvet size is right for you, which is not only something anyone would love to know, but also a title which will appeal to Google, because that is what potential customers would like to search for on Google. Do keywords ring a bell? So, they have clearly picked a niche here.
Are you able to showcase AI powered related products, upsell items and frequently bought together products on your Shopify store? To get all of these and more, install Perzonalization for Shopify now and start your 14 day free trial.
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Choose a blogging platform, a domain name, and build your blog.
- Self-hosted platforms: These platforms usually offer more customization options. However, you will be required to pay a monthly fee to host the site yourself and it needs some initial setup.
- Hosted platforms: With hosted platforms, you can get started right away and some of them even have built-in audiences. Some are free while some others are paid.
If you are already a Shopify merchant, we suggest you choose Shopify for blogging. There are many reasons to that. Firstly, Shopify is a hosted platform which gives you both an eCommerce site and a blogging platform. Secondly, you may choose among hundreds of marketing apps in the Shopify App store which can help your blog grow.
Look at another blog on Shopify; Press’s Blog, which they call the Squeeze Magazine. Press sells cold-pressed juices and juice cleanses. So healthy living is their big focus. They have used a Shopify blog template in the form of an online publication, called Squeeze Magazine. This Shopify blog focuses on every aspect of healthy living –workout clothes, healthy places to eat and life& mindfulness are the topics, covered.
Another successful example for blogs built on Shopify is Black Girls Run Blog that covers topics related to running and race announcements.
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Pick a Name and theme for your Shopify Blog
Once you’ve picked your platform, the next logical step is to choose a Shopify blog theme and decide on the Shopify blog layout. A “theme” is just a Shopify blog template for the layout, look and feel and features of your online store. There are plenty of free Shopify blog themes available online.
You should also simultaneously consider buying a domain name. While choosing a domain name, make sure it is memorable, easy, catchy and something that aligns with your brand name.
Here is a beautiful Shopify Blog example.
They talk about new products and publish “jewelry stories” revealing different memories of real people. They also use the Shopify Blog Sidebar to give their readers a guide on the categories and topics they write about on their blog. Bel Kai blog also includes shop collections in the Shopify blog sidebar, which is a smart way to bring customers back to their shop once they have clicked over to their blog.
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Plan a strategy for distributing the content of your blog on Shopify
Your blog is ready. But your job is only half way done. You need to have an audience in order to publish and share your valuable content. Here are a few things you need to start thinking about before you publish your Shopify blog.
- Start collecting email IDs: Gather your email subscribers.
- Device a content seeding plan: Quora is a good platform to find your niche audience and answer their queries with the help of your blog posts. It is also a very good platform to extract blog ideas as it includes many questions by the users from which you can gain insights on your target audience’s needs.
- Social Media Channels:
- Create relevant groups and communities on social media platforms like Facebook
- Follow some groups & forums to participate in their discussions and later use these groups to share your blog posts.
- Plan your publishing strategy
Now that you’ve learned tips to ensure Shopify blogging success, it’s time to focus on conversions. To get AI powered related products, upsell items and frequently bought together products, install Perzonalization for Shopify now and start your 14 day free trial.
Create a content calendar to help you keep track of your content publishing plan. A simple spreadsheet will serve the purpose. Or you could use online tools like Trello, HootSuite and Buffer for this.
A good content mix is also vital to create an appealing blog for your readers. Decide on your Shopify blog categories and work on the tags you may want to use to organize your blogs posts.
A good content mix to ensure success via Shopify blogging may include:
- Evergreen content that addresses problems and concerns that people regularly search on Google. Blogs on such topics can be re-published, curated and updated from time to time and will always attract readers.
- Topical content has the potential to tackle current and trending topics that your audience cares about.
- Curated content is somewhat smaller in scope, requires less time to create and keeps your audience engaged between longer posts.
- Visual or interactive content like info-graphics to support your blog or a video that can be relevant to your blog topics add variety and are also statistically more powerful than walls of texts.
Your job doesn’t end with publishing the blog. Once you have acquired a substantial amount of readership you will also have to regularly reply to Shopify blog comments. This is critical because when your readers comment on your blog, they are trying to spark a conversation. You will need to then follow through those questions because conversations lead to engagement, which leads to conversion of these readers to paying customers. This is why you have started blogging with Shopify in the first place, right?
Best Shopify Blog Ideas for Blogging on Shopify
Here are a few quick ideas that may help you get started with your blogging on Shopify:
- Case Studies of how your product helps people and works on your promise
- Demonstrations of how a product works and causes a change
- Sneak peeks into your business to let people know how you work
- Talk about your business values
- Launches & Product Announcements
- Upgrades and Improvements on your existing products
- Customer Profiles to help people see themselves in your testimonials and case studies
- Tutorials and Help Articles to offer answers and guidance
Blogging on Shopify: The Conclusion
Whether we like it or not but we need to admit that we are living in a content-rich world. And losing your brand in all this content noise is fairly easy. Having said that, you cannot choose to ignore being a part of this content trend. Once you have organized your Shopify blog, let your audiences know about it and make them a part of your journey of blogging on Shopify.
Curious to learn more? Take a look at related posts!
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