Thinking about starting blog posting on your online (fashion, furniture, home decor, real estate, building materials etc.) store? But you have no idea how it should look like, how often to publish the posts, what topics to choose. In this article, I provide the tips that will help you to build a proper blog from the different points of digital marketing view.
First, remember that there are different types of goals for every blog post:
- traffic driving (potential customers)
- customers/buyers driving
- increasing brand loyalty
For the newly opened online store with less than 100K users per month, the most important goals are traffic driving and increasing brand awareness. For the mid-size store with permanent users flow 100K-500K customers/buyers driving goal is a priority. And for the stores with more than 500K users per month increasing brand loyalty has to be in focus.
*the numbers of users are approximate. They can be higher/lower depending on the online store niche.
What Topics to Choose for Blog Posts to Drive Traffic?
Here I can write recommendations like “find the topics that are interesting for your customers; create unique valuable content bla bla bla…”. But it isn’t helpful because there is no answer in such recommendations on “what content is valuable for customers?”. So, I can give 2 tips:
1. Check popular search queries in Google’s Keyword Planner, Google Trends or AnswerThePublic (I use Keyword Planner but it isn’t the only option). Just type the phrase that is connected with your niche (e.x buy dress, red jacket, buy concrete in LA, building a house …) and check the keywords suggestions that the system offers you. Then segment them into groups by 3-6 similar keywords.
Let’s see how to do it on the example of “red dress” keyword. This is the suggestions:
- The first group is
little red dress
short red dress
sexy red dress
red party dress - The second group is:
long red dress
red maxi dress
red evening dresses
When you’re writing a blog post, add all keywords in the text from the group that you’ve chosen. I do not recommend to use 2 or more groups that semantically are different for one article.
With the mentioned groups you can make posts like: The best short red dresses ever, how to choose a little red dress, Trendy long red dresses – and so on. Your task is as an online fashion store owner to give your customers the best info on this topic. And don’t forget to give 2-3 links for the best red dresses at your own store.
2. The second method to understand what topics are interesting for your potential customers is to analyze posts’ popularity of your competitors. You can do it manually by inspecting each post page and checking the number of views, comments, and sharing. But I guess it will wear you out, so it is better to use competitors analyzing tools like Buzzsumo.
When you’re done with the list the most popular posts of your competitors, think what you can say on these topics. It is good to combine 2 popular topics, for example, “red dress” and “summer outfits” into “the best summer red dresses outfits”.
What Topics Posts to Choose to Drive More Customers?
Again, use some statistical services like Keyword Planner. But in this case, choose more precise keywords, the ones that contain “buy, purchase, order” words. As well as detailed keyword phrases like “blue cashmere sweater L” or “100mm solid concrete blocks”. Usually, it is better to use category or product pages optimized for such keywords. But if you do not have a suitable category (you have only the “cashmere sweaters” category for example), and there are 10 cashmere sweaters size L at your store. You can make a blog post with the links to them including extra information about their quality, price comparison, etc.
What Topics to Choose to Increase Brand Loyalty?
A completed purchase isn’t enough for a brand or store. To make your customers choose your products, again and again, it is significant to provide strong post-purchase support.
It may be surprising but a lot of customers starts searching extra information about the product after the purchase is made. So, it means that brand and shop owners have to create content that will respond to the customers’ questions. It means that you need to make blog posts about:
- How to use the product?
- How to keep it in better condition for a long time?
- How it was produced?
- Is the production process corresponds to the ethical standards?
- What ingredients are used?
- Can the product be mixed/combine with the others products and in which way?
And many others topics that your customers may face with. You can reveal them via:
- your own feedback channel
- analyzing the reviews on the competitors’ websites
Pay attention to the customers’ questions and their claims about the product. For example, a customer complains that the color of the sweater (brand name) she has bought was washed out too soon. It is a signal that you may need to write an article on the topic like “How to wash your (brand name) sweater” (of course, if you know that the reason for the problem isn’t the bad quality of the sweater).
These simple tips will help you to find out what topics bother your potential customers and what articles they may want to read.
If you have questions or other interesting tips, comment below!
