By now, you probably understand that one of most effective ways to market your business online is through the use of content. By creating valuable free content for your users, you can create trust, educate, build your brand, and ultimately rank higher on search engines. What’s even more pleasing is the content's ability to turn your prospects into customers and customers into repeat buyers.
So, how can you leverage the power of content marketing in making your eCommerce store a success? Below is a proven strategy you can employ.
Blogging
Blogging offers you an excellent opportunity to update your eCommerce store as regularly as possibly needed. Fortunately, Shopify includes an easy-to-use blogging feature that makes it incredibly simple to start up your own blog on the platform.
How To Run a Successful Blog
So you’ve already set up a blog on Shopify and want to begin churning out content for your audience. How do you ensure that you’re doing it right?
- Formulate a sound content marketing plan
First, you need to outline some of the top goals you want to achieve with your content marketing campaign. Are you looking to increase your subscribers, backlinks, or social shares? Besides, you also need to identify the primary target group(s) for your campaign, their interests, and preferences. Most importantly, you need to learn how to optimize your content so that it’s able to reach your targeted audiences more effectively.
- Track and run tests
For you to scale up your eCommerce business, you have to first collect relevant data. For this, consider setting up tracking using powerful tools such as Google Analytics and also run A/B tests using tools like Optimizely (https://www.optimizely.com). Some of the things you can test here include conversion rates of different types of content (e.g. how-tos articles, listicles, videos, podcasts, etc.).
- Try out paid social media advertising
Social media advertising and especially on Facebook can be an incredibly resourceful platform for promoting your eCommerce blog content and connecting with the right audience. As mentioned in our last installment on Shopify Social Media tips, Facebook allows you to target specific demographics which therefore means conversion can be quite high if done properly.
- Be unique
While it can be tempting to copy your competitors in an attempt to replicate their success, doing so may not be the best approach to take. Instead, try to craft unique content that makes you stand out from the rest. It pays off in the end.
How to Increase User Engagement on Your Shopify Blog
- Review some of your store’s top products and ask users to leave their feedback. This can help to create buzz around these products and possibly boost sales.
- Run contests or invent a flash game that encourages users to visit your website more often.
- Creatively answer your FAQs by infusing some personality in your solutions and content.
- Mix different types of media in your content. For example, you may consider adding videos, attractive photos, and even audio to your content.
- You may provide the history of your company and even some of your popular products.
- You can also talk about the composition of your team. Consider interviewing them. This helps to bring out the human side of your business.
Shopify is a complete solution that gives you the opportunity to build and run an online store cost effectively. The platform lets you organize your products, track your sales, and even create your business blog for increased user engagement. Shopify is highly optimized for SEO to help you beat your competition quite easily. Indeed, running and managing an eCommerce business has never been easier.
Still looking for more Shopify tips? Come back for our final Shopify installment (part 4) next week to read interviews we conducted with some successful Shopify users to get their thoughts on what it takes to do well on the platform.