eCommerce blogging is nothing new, but it’s relatively young in the larger blogging world. It hasn’t really caught on, which is a pity, because eCommerce blogging really CAN help your online store. More on that below. First, let’s break down the barrier to eCommerce blogging that you might be feeling yourself, albeit unconsciously.
eCommerce blogging sounds like a contradiction in terms to many more traditional business minds. Business is serious, right? Entrepreneurs are professional and, well, business-like. Blogging is just an inoffensive outlet. It’s a way of venting and sharing opinions that no one wants to hear without making the people you actually have to personally deal with hate you. Businesses have to keep up appearances and have no “business” being associated with the blogging sector. Besides, blogging is for people who have a lot of time on their hands, which, ahem, business owners do not waste on trivial pursuits.
This is the general atmosphere that eCommerce blogging has faced over the years. There’s some truth to it, of course – things never get that bad without some basis. The attitude, however, is overblown. It acts as an obstacle to the great opportunity that eCommerce blogging offers to businesses.
eCommerce blogging offers two major advantages that any business – even offline ones! – can profit from.
It’s All About Marketing
At the core of every business’s growth is marketing. You need to make your brand and store and products known to your target customer. Without promotion and advertising, you are a sitting cyber duck waiting to get blown out of the internet space – or at least pushed to the deepest online recesses. Here, so dark and far out of the mainstream, you lose all touch with the travelers. No longer is there any hope for you to get in front of those juicy targets who are begging to have their cash taken from them.
So sad, and all because you didn’t market to them in the way the Web understands.
Yes, I’m talking about eCommerce blogging.
eCommerce Blogging Attracts Attention
It’s just the way the internet works. Google and the other online information masters have cooked up and revamped and replaced a lot of “rules” over the years to generate profitable competition on the Web. But Content is King. It has been a constant for longer than any other best practice that Google has flippantly thrown at every website owner who thought he could make a buck.
Content isn’t just your listings and landing pages. Content is anything that is searchable. This means anything that the Google algorithm can read and categorize to rank and present to people accordingly. The operative word there is “rank”. You need content that Google wants to put up in the most prominent spot.
So what ranks?
The type of content that ranks is Google’s best kept secret. You can’t expect them to share their special sauce. The major ranking factors that we do know of, however, are subject relevancy and audience appeal. You know all about that if you’re a marketer. It’s the very basics of getting people to look at your products.
But how do you get your material in front of that audience? Search engines control that. What they want is information – and they prioritize the stuff that’s clicking.
See how that comes around full circle? Search engines profit from – and this is a very basic yet appropriate representation – controlling the distribution of information online. Give them the 411 on what the crowd clamors for and they’ll “pay” you with a spot on their display shelf. Google, Amazon, Yelp – wherever your targets search – this is the bottom line.
Now eCommerce blogging is simply content focused on online selling that is designed to appeal to the consumer. It’s information that your targets want to know, and the search engines want to control its supply. Embrace eCommerce blogging and you’ll get that SEO traffic you need to establish your presence in the axis of the Web. This is the only place you’d want to be any kind of cyber duck, sitting or otherwise.
Blog Content Funnels Your Visitors
So you’ve got how eCommerce blogging works to generate awareness and interest. Now you’re at the point where you are being judged, and online shoppers can be harsh – just had to say that in no uncertain terms in case you haven’t guessed it by now.
Decision Time
eCommerce blogging is pretty much masked sales content – people don’t like to be sold to, so they aren’t going to want to listen to your pitch. Don’t be that guy. The internet personality of today will tell you to take your hustle, go climb Mount St. Helens and jump in the fiery lake. Or they’ll just seen-zone you. Either way, you’re dead before you get more than your toes in the water.
Gone are the days when a business could parade around, so proud to be society’s benefactor. Today, the customer doesn’t come to you unless you have something very special to offer. You’ve been dethroned by competition-bearing progress, make no mistake about that. You have to tickle their fancy. More than what your ideal customer wants, you need to be ready to serve it to them in the way they prefer. eCommerce blogging, man.
Produce content FOR your customer. eCommerce blogging is perfect for this. It’s not focused on YOUR traffic or conversions. Let your landing pages and social media ads have all of that sour stuff. eCommerce blogging is the voice behind the numbers. eCommerce blogging is the human being that sits at the core of the impersonal machine that’s shoving shiny items in everyone’s face.
Ultimately, customers either want what you’re selling or they don’t. But those that want it can get it elsewhere. What they really want is what else that item comes along with. They’re tired of the vending-machine culture that technology has produced. They want the interaction of relationship, that whole personal experience – they want to deal with the man, not the machine. Their decision to purchase is based in a large part on how much they like YOU.
Use eCommerce blogging to introduce yourself, share with these people, make meaningful contact. Demonstrate why you put stock in this or that product. Show them that there’s a person behind each one, thinking about its value and wanting to share those benefits with them. Be human. Be one of the guys. And move people to the cart in the most organic and non-offensive way. Essentially, you are encouraging action by just being yourself, unobtrusively sharing your thoughts, and the decision is theirs. In reality, however, you have brought them to that point of no return.
Take Action
Master eCommerce blogging and you will get the cream of the visitor crop at your doorstep, handing you so much money that you won’t have hands enough to take it let alone put it away.
Out with the lofty ideas of what business should look like – you’re not attracting anything with that vinegar of exaggerated self-opinion. Embrace the customer and cater to that persona in the way it desires – nay, needs to be gratified. How can you NOT sell if you’re offering what they both need and want most?
