The importance of blogging for retailers
It is pretty obvious in this day and age that an online presence is a crucial ingredient in the success of most businesses. However, when it comes to retail, aside from information and product descriptions, is there really much else that you can post online? Well yes there is and it is best executed in the style of blog posts.
If you take a look at any of the big retailers online, the majority of them have a blog. These might be posted daily, weekly or even monthly, but the successful ones usually fall into the category of interesting, useful or entertaining – and sometimes all three! Whilst blogging does require an investment of time, it can add value to your business and your customer’s experience.
Let’s take a look at the different areas in which blogging can benefit your business.
Improve Google Search Rankings
Being ranked highly on Google is a huge advantage for any business. Google has got smarter and the new algorithms it uses for searches now value high quality SEO (search engine optimized) content over keyword stuffing.
Having a blog is a double threat. Not only can you share quality content, but by optimizing it for SEO you can improve your search ranking. This means that anyone searching for your product has a much greater chance of finding your business website.
Create an Online Brand
The majority of shoppers now do research online before making a purchase, meaning that your virtual presence needs to be just as impressive as your real-world one. Brand continuity for both your online and offline stores should be a serious consideration, so that you can provide a seamless experience for customers across all platforms of sale.
Blogging, along with social media, helps to initiate relationships with potential customers, and secure loyalty from existing ones. Allowing comments on your blog posts gives you the opportunity to respond quickly. Each positive interaction with customers adds value to their experience with you, as they feel valued by your business.
Be at the Forefront of Your Industry
Trying to stand out from your competition is particularly hard in retail. When products and prices are similar, the one way you can ensure customers come to you rather than your competitor is by finding your USP and capitalizing on it through your blog. Whether it is becoming the go-to website for industry information, offering practical advice or a combination of useful, entertaining and interesting features, compelling and unique content will keep your audience coming back for more.
Organization is vital, and again consistency is key. Decide on the appropriate posting schedule and stick to it. Remember that quality is far more important than quantity. Post too often and you won’t have enough compelling content to keep people interested, but post too little and you will be forgotten about.
Top Tip: Don’t forget, for every blog post that you make you need to remember to schedule the time to share it across your social media channels!
Sharing is Caring
The popular phrase “sharing is caring” is all over social media, but it also applies to blog posts. Top quality blog posts that conform to that magical formula of interesting, funny and useful get shared – a lot! The better the content you can create, the more likely your blog post is to get shared, again raising the profile of your business and brand.
An Inside Job!
Blogging can also add value to your staff and work environment. Teaching existing staff members how to blog for you is great for their personal and professional development as it gives them a new skill. Allocating blog posts to different staff members and giving them the credit for them gives them active participation in the company brand and adds variety to their working routine, whilst also saving you money on outsourcing!
Be Creative
Blogging is essentially an empty canvas on which you can utilize as you see fit. Whether you want to blog about a new product line, internal company changes or related industry developments, you can find dynamic new ways of interacting with your audience. Vlogs (video blogs) are becoming a popular way to add variety to your blog space.
Memorable blogs help your business to stand out from the rest, so brainstorm with your team and see what ideas you have to make your blog space unique.
Create Business Relationships
There is nothing to stop you using your blog to create complimentary business relationships that can also add value to your brand and to your customer’s experience. For example, a furniture retailer may choose to blog about their newest point of sale (POS) system. Not only does this make the customer aware of the procedures for making payment (useful and informative), but the POS business may then blog about the furniture store adopting their system and how their system may be implemented across a wide range of retailers (useful and informative).
These blogs would then indirectly result in raising the profile of both businesses.
Find your inspiration for a successful blog by looking at your competition, identifying what they are doing and brainstorm with your team to plan how you can go further and add more value to your audience.