A fun and exciting way to increase traffic to your blog or eCommerce store is through content marketing. Content marketing does more than drive traffic; it also increases sales.
Experts estimate that you can increase your conversion rate over 500% — a significant margin and advantage over online merchants who are not taking advantage of this tool.
Before you get too excited, we want to warn you about these blogging mistakes that rookies make that do more harm than good.
7 Mistakes to Avoid when Blogging
1. Writing to Everyone Including the Kitchen Sink
As a business owner, you should have a clear picture of who your target customer is. If you don’t know, now is the time to get crystal clear.
If your audience is too broad, then no-one will find your blog, and it will not help you increase your traffic nor sales.
Things you should know about your customer include:
- Age group
- Gender
- Income
- Interests
- Fears
- Desires
Many marketers recommend fleshing out your customer and getting into their brain. The more you know about your customer, the easier it will be to talk to them in a way that they understand and that will drive sales.
Create an icon and direct all your blog posts to that persona.
2. Not Collecting Email Addresses from Day One
Hopefully, you have already started collecting the email addresses of your customers. If not, begin today.
Your email list is your greatest asset for your blog and your online store.
Once you have the email address of a blog reader, you can email them every time you create a new post — which will drive traffic to your blog. Even better, you can send them special offers, discounts and notifications of new products.
With your product and brand in front of the eyes of your customer, your sales are bound to increase.
To collect the email addresses, you need to offer your clients something of value for their information. Some things you can offer in eCommerce might include:
- Free Shipping
- A Coupon
- Free Product
Whatever methods you use to entice your customers to join your email list, start right away.
3. Not Taking Advantage of Automated Marketing
Email automation can drastically increase your traffic and sales.
You can automate email campaigns based on many of the shopping and browsing behaviors of your customers.
A welcome automation workflow could automatically send a series of blog post emails that talk about one of your products or how your company began.
In each email, create interest in the content on your blog. Then, include a link back to the blog post. This method will increase traffic to your blog and encourage engagement with your brand. When skillfully executed, it will also increase your product sales.
4. Erratic Blogging Schedule or None at All
Regular content drives regular traffic. If your blogging schedule is erratic, it can confuse your audience and hinder your Google search results (traffic).
The best policy is to set a schedule and stick with it. Also, Google prefers longer, more in-depth content over short posts.
According to Oberlo.com, high-ranking blog posts usually have a minimum of 1,000 words. Decide how often you can supply quality content and schedule your content in advance. Then, stick with that schedule.
It will build confidence and trust with your customers and help your search engine results.
5. Focusing too Much on Your Self
Your primary purpose for blogging should be to build your business. Don’t use your platform to share too much personal information. Keep the content relevant to the interests of your readers.
If you need to tell the world about your new hobby raising goats (and it has nothing to do with your eCommerce store), then find a different platform to discuss it.
You want to keep the interests of your readers as the priority so that you can drive traffic that will result in sales.
6. Putting Your Traffic Goals Higher than Your Reader
Another way to lose readers is to focus too much on search engine optimization. SEO is important, but if you are trying to stuff your content with a bunch of keywords to drive traffic, you are going to be very disappointed with the results.
Develop high-quality, valuable content that will interest readers who might want to buy your products. Include relevant SEO tactics, but don’t force them into the text.
Readers don’t like choppy or irrelevant text.
7. Illegally Borrowing Images and Treating them Like Your Own
Don’t steal images off the Internet without permission. Eventually, you will get caught and could end up with a costly lawsuit. It is much easier to pay for images on the front side.
Another great option is to use free images from sites like Pixabay, Pikwizard or Unsplash. Even better, use photos that you or your team have taken personally.
Blogging is the single most organic way to get your brand on your customer’s radar. However, given how successful blogging is, there are tons of bloggers out there to give you competition. Luckily, that means there are a lot of mistakes others have made that you can learn from.
Avoid these seven blogging mistakes, and you will find that you will have more success in your eCommerce business. Your blog posts will begin showing up in search engine results, which means more traffic. Then, you’ll entice readers to join your email list so that you can keep them coming back again and again.
As an added benefit, when done correctly, you can expect to see an increase in your conversion rates and sales.
Kate Lynch is a business and digital marketing blogger who spends her entire day writing quality blogs. She is a passionate reader and loves to share quality content prevalent on the web with her friends and followers, keeping a keen eye on the latest trends and news in those industries. Currently, she is associated with OmniSend, an e-commerce marketing automation platform built for growing e-commerce businesses. Follow her on twitter @IamKateLynch for more updates.
