Why Should you be Blogging on Shopify?
Blogging has become a huge part of an eCommerce marketing strategy. But many Shopify store owners don’t see the potential of blogging in their stores. Most people don’t find the need to start blogging for their online store since its prime purpose is to facilitate purchases.
But blogging on Shopify is a great way to keep people longer on your site and direct them to your merchandise. You can use it to convince people to believe that you are the best that they’ve got rather than spamming them with discounts or offers on the store. Blogging gives you space for including more keywords and create plenty of backlinks to your website, which is a big advantage in terms of SEO. Not just that, your Shopify store needs adequate traffic to survive and grow on the internet. The traffic that comes to your website along with the blog gives an additional boost to your online store.
Most people find it confusing to manage a blog for their Shopify site. Well, we can help you create some engaging content that performs consistently. We’ll be more than happy to support you!
In this article, we’ll be discussing ways to help you master blogging on your Shopify website. Read on to find them out!
How to Create a Shopify Blog?
1. Decide on a Niche
Look around and ponder the infinite content opportunity that surrounds you. And then come up with an idea which you think will stand out. Choose a specific audience to focus on to serve the content that you are going to make. At the same time, you need to ensure that the content that you come up with has something about it that the readers can’t easily find elsewhere.
The blogs dealing with content that focuses on a specific location, or a specific segment within a larger category can be considered while deciding your niche. Or you can come up with a different approach while blogging using a unique style or voice. These are just some ways to pick your niche for blogging. You can create content in whichever niche you feel comfortable, provided that you can come up with timely ideas consistently.
You don’t necessarily have to discover and pick a niche that is “path-breaking”, instead you can create and publish content that connects with the products you sell on your Shopify store. This also doesn’t mean that you can use that space to pitch and market all your products. Be selective and decide on products you could potentially sell to this audience and then create content based on those products.
Also, it doesn’t matter if your niche is common among content creators. As long as you provide quality content and in-depth posts that no one else is willing to create, you can ace at blogging in your Shopify store.
2. Right Blogging Platform
Choosing the right platform for blogging is the step where most aspiring bloggers get stuck. Most of them get confused when they have to choose from a Self-hosted platform and a Hosted platform. A self-hosted platform is more customizable although you’ll have to bear the expense of monthly fees to host the site yourself. In addition to this, it requires some initial setup assistance as well. On the other hand, hosted-platforms already have some built-in audiences (some are paid as well), helping you get started with ease.
When it comes to Shopify, it is a hosted platform that permits you to use it as both an eCommerce site and a blogging platform. And there are plenty of apps to support you to manage both.
3. Decide on a Name & Theme
Next comes the task of buying a domain and choosing a theme for your website. It goes without saying that the domain name should be catchy, creative, easy to type & remember, and most importantly, isn’t already taken by another brand. Use keyword research tools to find terms that people search the most or use tools to generate keyword combinations and then use them in your domain name. Also, avoid using hyphens or numbers in the domain name since it brings in confusion otherwise.
Shopify offers plenty of blog themes to choose from; you can also consider paying the one-time fee for a paid theme if the free ones aren’t appealing to you.
4. Plan a Strategy
The next important step is to plan a strategy to distribute the content of your blog on Shopify. Most would-be bloggers fail to realize the importance of pre-planning to growing an audience. They consider it a headache to be dealt with after publishing the content. But it is something that you need to start thinking about even before you launch the blog, a robust and executable distribution strategy.
The email list can be utilized for marketing the content which you already have. You can plan on a separate social media marketing strategy to announce your new blog, and talk about every new article you post on the blog. A robust publishing strategy can be established by using an editorial calendar. You can pre-plan on the dates, and the content to be published based on your seasonal products, product releases, other events, or collaborations you’re doing in the calendar. This approach is beneficial since following an editorial calendar will help you post content on the blog consistently.
How to Make it Work?
1. Set Goals & Objectives
Set your goals and objectives right for each post you publish. Think about the reason why you started blogging on your Shopify site. Ask yourself what you want to achieve through each blog post. The hard work put in to create content for the blog is in vain if it is incapable of attaining its end goal. Ultimately, the objective should be to make the reader convert. A conversion can be anything from turning the reader into a subscriber, share your blog post with their friends, subscribe to your mailing list, like your Facebook page, to shop on your sale or buy a product.
Once you decide on the action you want your reader to take, do your research, plan, and then write the content, design images & graphics.
2. Communicate the Value you Provide
Content that sounds like a mere sales pitch is not going to gain you any traffic. You need to create content that excites your reader and make them feel good about your brand. It can be an actionable form of information like tutorials, how-to-do content. For example, if your website sells cosmetics, your blog can include tutorials by popular beauty bloggers on skincare. It can be made into an added advantage if they vouch for your products on that. By producing and publishing such content, you’re adding value to your followers. This will further remind and encourage them to choose you when they want to shop for cosmetics in the future.
You can instill value by providing interesting information, inspirational content, or content based on a product’s cash value and more depending on your niche.
3. Use Keywords Appropriately
A step that could make a huge difference in the way your Shopify blog gets received is by including keywords everywhere possible. Your website needs adequate traffic to survive on the internet, for which your website needs to be accessible to all. When the Google bots crawl and index your website, they take keywords on them very seriously.
Think of terms or phrases that people would browse if they happen to be searching for something related to your website niche. Use Google suggest to get keyword suggestions. Or derive keyword ideas from tools like Google Planner and check its popularity using Google Trends. Now, use them on your article title, the article’s URL, the alt tags for your photos, the heading tag in your article, and the meta description.
Once you’ve figured out your keywords, do not spam Google with them, instead, stick to the keyword use limitation.
4. Decide on the Headline
Headline first, rest of the content comes after. You must be wondering why to decide on the headline first when you can create it at any point of content drafting. The reason is just that a headline keeps you away from taking any diversion while writing the main content. Set the end goal you wish to achieve through the blog as your headline. When you fix the headline prior to writing the content, it will help you put more attention into what people want to know, why they’re clicking over to your site, and further shape the article accordingly.
At the same time, the headline acts as a bait to bring people over to the article. So, spend some time and craft a fresh and catchy headline.
5. Rough Draft for your Post
Keep your creative juices flowing and start writing the rough draft for your article. At this point of content creation, forget the fuzz about search engine optimization and just focus on your end goal & objective set by you. Ensure that the article makes sense with the title you gave it. Like mentioned above, the content should never be stuffed with keywords. It should be written prioritizing the reader first. Keep it simple, use a conversational tone, and use your keyword (and its variations) only where it makes sense to your readers.
6. Give Space for People to Contribute
You don’t always have to create content for your blog, you can ask other people to contribute content in the form of quotes, testimonials, photos, or post interviews with people. These give room for expressing another person’s perspective on the type of content that your blog deals with.
Also, ensure that the contributions are factually correct and carry some value in them because it’s your own blog after all!
7. Write Guest Posts
Do not stop by asking people to guest post on your blog. You can do the same on someone else’s blog too. You can guest post a small excerpt of your article and put a link to the original article on your blog for people to read further. This way, you can attract a new set of audiences into your blog through guest posting.
Or you can create entirely new content for guest posting on other’s blogs. Executing this requires some planning; decide on the basic idea and present it to the blog you intend to publish before you write.
When you repost the content on other blogs, set the post to “noindex”, so that Google doesn’t count it while indexing. Otherwise, Google could penalize websites of both the parties involved for being a spammer.
8. Call them to Take Action
What was the purpose of writing an article or even coming up with a blog on Shopify in the first place? Remember the goals and objectives you set initially? Now it’s time to make it happen. Tell all your readers the action which you would like them to take.
Invest some time, study your prospect’s desire, curiosity, interest, etc., and deliver content that makes them glad they took action. For example, placing a heartwarming line of text like “ I hope you’re enjoying this lovely guide I made for you!”. You can put a custom newsletter box on each post so that the readers can connect with you if they want more on that topic, and join your newsletter. Or you can place a CTA button to visit your online store and make a purchase. For example, if you discussed the benefits of a product in your article, you can then place a CTA button to ask them to visit your online store.
9. Link & Collaborate with Others
Make sure you link to anyone you’ve mentioned on your blog. Show some love to your fellow bloggers, business owners, customers, shops, craft fairs, etc. People appreciate it when they’re being talked about on the internet. Connect with them to gain their attention and build a relationship that could be helpful to you in the future. Building such relationships sends them some traffic as well as encourage them to reshare your article with their audience.
10. Add Images & Graphics
The images and graphics used in your article should be bright, clear, interesting, and of the right size for your blog. Use professional tools like Photoshop while designing images or graphics containing text or illustrations.
11. Headers & Alt Tags
Organize the blog by dividing longer posts into smaller ones and giving headings to them. This makes it much easier to grab your readers’ attention, and help those that may be skimming through the content to see if they’re interested. This practice also helps Google understand your article better.
Include the “alt” tag for all the images used in the blog. It helps readers understand the contents of that image even if it fails to load. Alt text makes it easier for screen readers, and search engines to understand what the image depicts. Using your target keyword to describe the image makes your blog more SEO friendly too.
12. Crosslink onto your Website
Crosslink your blog articles with other content and pages on your website. This approach will let people continue hanging out on your domain and get to know what you do. You don’t always have to link using the content, instead, you can set up related categories, tags, and related posts for people to read next to the content. And most importantly, you can link to your product and services pages through this.
Conclusion
Here are a few more suggestions. Do not forget to edit and proofread the contents before publishing it. Keep it tidy consistently. The reader should feel that the content was written because the writer knew enough or cared enough about that topic. To connect with the missing links, notify people or domains that were mentioned on your blog. Go a step further and ask people to share the blog, chat about the blog on social media, start an email series, and more.
The internet is already a content-rich space. Yet, new creators are coming up and successfully growing their business. You can also easily find your audience and expand your Shopify store if you haven’t done it till now. All you need to do is to find time and ideas consistently.
Still, confused? We’ve got you covered. Connect with our team of Shopify experts and expand your business right now!
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