I have spent many years managing e-commerce sites selling products of various types; from apparel, cds, dvds and tickets to fan club subscriptions and video on demand. It is always challenging to make your product sound exciting and interesting when you discuss it in a social environment. What can you say about a t-shirt in a blog post? First thing, don’t just talk about the actual product and how you should be buying the product. Users do not want to just hear about sell, sell, sell. You will create a much deeper and longer relationship if you talk about information that will help them. Talk about the entire product category or industry. Provide details into how products are made. Customers love tips and lists.

Read this great article for more discussion on what you can talk about when you blog.

For the majority of eCommerce stores a consistent problem is getting visitors to their website. Blogging helps alleviate this problem while driving qualified traffic to your website. Search engines and human readers alike put priority on fresh content and blogging makes it easier to get your eCommerce shop involved in conversations happening around your industry. Besides blogging’s effectiveness in pulling in potential consumers companies that blog accumulate 55% more traffic than companies that don’t blog.ecommerce-blogging

Still, there are few things you need to know to write effective blog articles that attract the right audience, build a following and community, and most importantly gives you the opportunity to put your products in front of potential consumers.

eCommerce Blog Topics

First and foremost, you should NOT always be writing about your products specifically. Instead, blog about general products within an industry. For example, if you sell Canon HD Cameras don’t write specifically about why consumers should purchase Canon HD Cameras from you. Write about HD camera’s in general in ways that your audience will find interesting and helpful. Consider writing about the general industry of photography and videography. People do not know your specific product offerings yet and are not searching explicitly for it. They ARE searching for general information on products, answers to questions they have as well as ways to excel at the professions or hobbies.

Think about the problem your product solves or the desire it satisfies. Your blog posts need to show immediate value to your audience to effectively reach them.

* What did you teach them about the product?

* What did they learn or take away from the blog post?

* What was the unique insight you provided to them?

The answers to these questions should be clear before you begin to write the article. Still, don’t over think your blogs content. As an expert in the industry the knowledge you have that you consider elementary or well-known could be unfamiliar yet extremely valuable to your target market.

How Products Are Used

Not every product is self-explanatory or equipped with clear instructions. There may be a number of ways that a product can be used, while the majority of product owners only use it for its basic functions. Open up their eyes to all that it can do.

A few examples include:

* Teach them how they can be more efficient and effective using the product.

* Explain all of the uses of the product to people that have never owned one.

* Describe features you believe not everyone is taking advantage of.

Giving your audience insight and knowledge they didn’t have before reading the article is going position yourself as a thought leader in the industry. In order to later sell your products to this audience you need to gain their trust and respect, especially if they are comparison shopping.

News About the General Product and Industry

If some news occurs around a product or industry, you want to be the first to break it. Share your opinion on new features or enhancements that are affecting the products you sell or distribute. For example, if you sell running shoes and new technology is arriving that is going help reduce stress on runner’s feet and shins then blog about it. Add your opinion and shape the conversation in your favor. You’re probably already aware of any news surrounding the industry and sharing this news while adding your unique insight will be extremely helpful for your readers.

You can also take advantage of spikes in searches around this news by writing about the news and properly optimizing your blog post. These spikes are a great opportunity to generate jumps in traffic by simply discussing hot topics in the industry. For example, all eCommerce companies should have blogged about Cyber Monday the days leading up to online shopping’s version of Black Friday to bring in qualified traffic searching for information about the day.

Promotions and Giveaways

If you have the opportunity to do any sort of promotion or giveaway from your website make sure you blog about it. This post should once again focus on how the target audience could benefit from entering the promotion or giveaway, not just about your eCommerce store or the products. People enjoy contests and free opportunities and these posts can attract a lot of eyeballs and inevitably visitors. Discuss the promotion making sure to consistently explain the value of the promotion in terms of what potential consumers have to gain.

As you begin to regularly blog you should analyze which articles generate the most traffic, comments and inbound links to your website to help determine what interest your audience most. This type of information is critical to making the most out of your blogging efforts.

What other subjects can eCommerce websites cover in their blog to bring in qualified traffic to their website? Please leave your thoughts in the comments section below.

via Successful Blogging Topics for eCommerce Websites.