As the owner of an online shop, you’ve probably tried many marketing tactics. Advertising, social media strategies, and other popular tactics can help to boost your brand, but nothing is quite as useful for brand building as blogging. If you want to beat the competition, use these tips for building your blog and your company as a result.
Create a Clear Brand
Before diving into the blogging aspect of brand building, evaluate your brand. Do you have a reliable brand that can support your efforts? A good brand involves both aesthetics and quality. It should maintain the same color scheme and fonts wherever you publish work. When a customer encounters your brand, either on social media or on your website, they should immediately know that it’s yours.
For example, Penguin CBD, a newer brand that’s rapidly climbing the ranks in the CBD world, has a powerful brand that starts with a fantastic website and continues with incredible products and services. Their website is clear, simple, and attached to their name and logo. The same goes for their presence across the web. The color scheme is on-point, the buttons are clickable, and it provides exactly the right amount of information.
No matter your industry, you can learn from this company that’s managed to stand out in one of the most competitive markets today.
Build a Body of Content
Starting a blog to go with your online shop is one of the most profound ways to bring customers to your virtual door. The more content you have, the more deeply indexed your website will be in search engines.
Beyond that, there will be plenty of information for consumers to research when they want questions answered about your products. You can publish timeless articles about what your product is, the many benefits of it, and how it can help specific people. There should also be news articles that discuss current, trending news to help you appear higher in search results and show that you’re on top of the discussion.
Publish both the good and the bad in your industry. When you tackle the bad side, show how your brand is striving to improve and solve the problem. For example, you might publish content that warns about dishonesty and unethical behavior in the industry. Your posted warnings will show that you’re a concerned member of the community, and you would never practice such unethical behaviors.
Use SEO and Link Building Strategies
Good search engine optimization demands an excellent blogging platform. With enough content published both on your blog and in publications all over the web, you can steadily work your way up the search results pages until you’re in the top results. Since most people searching for products don’t click past the first page, this is one of the most important tactics of building your brand online.
Today’s SEO optimization strategies involve the use of keywords that direct consumer action, just as they always have. However, they’re now more dependent on link building and guest blogging. To boost search rankings, you want to get links to your website (ideally homepages, landing pages, and product pages) published in blogs in multiple categories.
Most publications accept guest blog posts, and they don’t mind if you include a link to your website as long as it’s done naturally and isn’t overly promotional. As you build up links to your content throughout the world wide web, you’ll start to earn links back to your website. Your blog will be established as a thought leader in the industry, and other bloggers will use your website links to boost the credibility of your brand, forcefully pushing your blog up the ranks.
Establish a Consistent Voice
So much of branding for online e-commerce shops is personifying the brand. Quiet brands typically don’t stand out when there are louder, more exciting brands out there. It’s essential to look for ways that you can make a noise, and establishing a loud voice for your brand is an integral part of that.
Determine your target audience, whether they’re elderly folks who need your product for their quality of life or young adults seeking a good time. Then, speak to them in the voice they want to hear. You might include jokes where appropriate or keep things professional.
You can augment your blogging voice through social media. Your social posts can match the same view, and you can do videos in the same style.
Share, Share, Share
You can’t create content and then hope that customers will stumble upon it. That does happen, but it’s rarer than many business owners realize. Getting your content noticed takes work, primarily in the sharing sphere.
Jump on multiple social media platforms and share each new piece of content. You might also create videos or short posts that link back to old blog posts for reference. Each social share should aim to add value to the lives of a specific group.
Encourage your followers to share your content as well. You might even incentivize their shares by offering a particular discount or a free piece of content in exchange for their cooperation. That furthers your reach while helping to boost your marketing.
You could also share your content on forums in relevant industries. Search the web for discussions that are popular among your audience or general forums like Quora or Reddit. When someone asks a question about a problem, your product can answer, chime in with a link to your products.
Blogging and getting your content out there puts your company at a considerable advantage. It gives you the tools you need to stand out and the foundation necessary to hold everything up. If you haven’t already, incorporate blogging into your online marketing strategy.
