Published by Charlotte Davies
18.08.21
Every day, 7.5 million blog posts are published online. That’s a lot of content, and this figure is continuing to rise.
In a post-pandemic world, ecommerce businesses are trying to find new ways to stand out from the crowd, drive more traffic and ultimately convert more sales. Blogging is a strategic part of this. So, if you don’t have a Shopify blog yet, then you’ll want to start now to avoid missing out.
In this article, we look at the benefits of having a blog for your online business, how to upload a blog onto your Shopify store and examples of some of the best Shopify blogs out there.
Benefits of using your Shopify blog
Using a Shopify blog on your online store makes it easier to:
1. Build trust with your customers
Nowadays, consumers are cynical about buying from brands they don’t know. This is where blogs can help. When your Shopify blog content is relevant and up-to-date, customers are more likely to engage with your content and stay on your site for longer. A comments section on a blog post is also a brilliant trust signal for customers, it’s proof that other people are engaging with your content and this helps to cultivate a community of loyal fans.
2. Improve your Shopify SEO rankings
Multiple Shopify blog posts can help increase your store’s rankings in search engines like Google. So be sure to optimise your content with relevant keywords and backlinks. Also, if you’re looking to take your store globally, then check out this handy article Shopify SEO: Best Practices for International Expansion.
3. Convince a customer that your products are right for them
Product descriptions are great, but you don’t have enough characters or space to write detailed information about your brand or the products themselves. This is where blog posts come in handy. Blogs give you a chance to talk to your customers and explain everything you want them to know in a way that resonates with their daily lives. When thinking about blog content ideas, always focus on topics around how your products benefit a customer and solve a problem they might have. And don’t forget to always backlink your products to your blogs with clear CTA’s throughout. This will make it easier for customers to make that all-important purchase if they decide to buy from you.
4. Communicate your brand’s personality and values
Regular blog content is an effective way to communicate your brand’s unique personality and values. You can write blogs in your business’s unique tone of voice and cover niche topics that your audience will find interesting and relatable. So, get creative, and give your customers a reason to keep reading and purchasing!
Tips for creating high-value blog posts
To make the most of your Shopify blog, you should be prepared to invest time in maintaining it. This means publishing original content, writing with your customers in mind, and injecting as much value as possible.
When drafting your blog content consider the following:
- Have a clear goal in mind: Ask yourself why you’re writing the blog in the first place.
- Avoid the hard sell: Your blog should promote your products, but it shouldn’t be sales-focused. Instead, educate, entertain and delight customers with relevant, high-quality content.
- Quality over quantity: Whether you’re writing an in-depth how-to article or a brief roundup of monthly news, always have your customer in mind. Keep your blog concise and establish your expertise.
- Write simple sentences: Avoid ‘keyword stuffing’, as this can make your blog difficult to read. Keep it simple and speak in the language your customers understand.
- Consistency: If you only post one blog a month, that’s okay. Just make sure you’re consistent.
How to add a Shopify blog to your store
Activating your Shopify blog is easy. Simply go to your Shopify admin area and click “Online Store” on the left side of the menu. On the sub-menu, click “Blog Posts”. At the top, click “Manage Blogs”, and then on the top right, click “Add Blog”. Give your blog a name and then add it to your site’s navigation menu.
Shopify’s blog management capabilities
With blogging, it’s all about content: what topics you discuss, what your customers are interested in, and how far and wide your content is shared. Luckily for you, by default Shopify makes it easier for your customers to find, explore and share your content.
On Shopify you can:
Manage comments section
Shopify gives you control over how your comments are displayed on your blog posts. For example, you can:
- Disable comments: We wouldn’t recommend this because it can make it difficult to build a brand community and get feedback from customers, but on the plus side, it keeps your time investment to a minimum.
- Comments with moderation: You have a lot of control over what types of comments are visible on your site, but this can be a time-consuming process, depending on how many readers leave comments.
- Comments are automatically published: This helps cultivate an active community and requires minimal time management, but this can leave your brand at risk if inappropriate comments are displayed. So be sure to monitor your comments frequently.
Schedule a publish date
On Shopify, you can set a specific publish date for your blog in advance to align with your content calendar and promotional offers. This also allows you to streamline your content: scheduling multiple posts at once and setting them to publish once a week, for example. You can also backdate a Shopify blog post.
Display an excerpt from a blog post
On your Shopify blog main page, you can feature an excerpt of a post (including images, text, and links).
To add an excerpt to your Shopify blog, go into one of your blog posts and under the text box, click “Add Excerpt”.
Organise your blog posts with tags
Shopify gives you the flexibility to assign one or more tags to a blog post so that customers can easily find blog posts relevant to that category. For example, when a customer searches for a particular tag on your store, matching blog posts will appear in the search results.
Optimise social media engagement with icons
Almost all Shopify themes include social media buttons for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, etc. If your theme doesn’t include these buttons, we can add them using an app or code. (If you require expert help with this, get in touch with our team of Shopify developers today).
Invite customers to subscribe to your blog content
Shopify automatically produces an RSS feed for every blog that you create, so customers can subscribe to it and receive notifications when you publish a new post. The feed URL is the blog page URL with .atom appended. For example, http://store.myshopify.com/blogs/blogname.atom. Customers can also subscribe to your blog feed using FeedBurner.
Promote featured posts
It’s often the case that particular blogs will perform better than others – either it drives more traffic, or it significantly generates more sales. It’s these types of blogs that you want people to find quickly and easily. On Shopify, this isn’t a problem, you can position a featured blog post, so it appears on your store’s homepage.
Search engine optimisation (SEO)
Out-of-the-box Shopify makes it easier for search engines to find your store. Its SEO functionality allows you to edit content, such as page titles, meta descriptions, and URLs, for each blog post.
Within a blog post, below the text box is a section titled, “Search Engine Listing Preview” you can manually edit the text. Use keywords, engaging language and a clear CTA to help people find your content and click the link.
The page title and meta description have character limits. If you enter more text beyond the character limit, then your page title and meta description will be shortened in search engine results. Shopify shows you a preview of how this will look in the search engine.
Customise your Shopify blog with apps
Shopify gives you the freedom to customise your blog section with additional functionalities and features. To do this, you just need to head to Shopify’s third-party app library and find the app that’s right for you. Each app seamlessly integrates with Shopify, so you can have your blog section looking the way you want it to, in no time at all.
For example, one app that’s particularly popular with merchants is AddThis, which makes it easier for customers to share blog content across their social media channels. The app allows you to customise the icons to suit your branding and connects to over 200 different social networks, including Messenger, WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, and many more. Also, you can use AddThis Analytics to get valuable insights into customer engagement.
Another app that merchants find useful is the Related Posts app. This allows you to suggest other related blog posts of yours to customers on your Shopify blog. It’s great because not only does it give your customers a reason to stay on your site, it also increases brand engagement and it’s great for SEO.
Shopify has over 4000 apps, so if you want to do something with your blog, there’s probably an app for it. But if not, get in touch with our team of Shopify experts and we’ll build one for you.
Shopify vs WordPress: which is better for blogging?
It’s no secret that WordPress is primarily used as a blogging platform and many marketers enjoy working with WordPress for its content-driven architecture. However, when it comes to selling online, especially for high growth direct-to-consumer brands, we suggest steering clear, and instead use the ultra-scalable and secure Shopify platform.
What about WooCommerce? Well, it just doesn’t compete with what Shopify can offer and we’re finding more and more merchants moving away from WooCommerce to Shopify for a number of reasons. If you want to find out more about the comparison between the two platforms, then check our article on WooCommerce to Shopify: Reasons to Make the Move Now.
7 of the best Shopify blogs from D2C brands
Your Shopify agency
Shopify covers all your blogging needs, plus it’s quick and easy to get started. We hope after reading this article you understand the importance of blogging and how to upload a blog to your Shopify store. At Velstar, our digital marketing experts have years of experience working with Shopify brands to help them produce high-quality, SEO driven content that achieves results. If you’d like us to do the same for your business, reach out to today.
