How can blogging work for your retail business?

Spring Fair International5th February 2014

About Me

@emilyhill1982@writemysiteuk.linkedin.com/in/emilyjanehill/emily.hill@writemysite.co.uk

• Set up Write My Site in 2006:www.writemysite.co.uk

• A lot has changed …

• … but some things have stayed the same

Contents

• The case for blogging• What to write?• Blogging and social media• Reaching out to other bloggers• Case study: Kaleidoscope• Crunching the numbers• Conclusion• Q&A

The case for blogging

There are two reasons why every e-Commerce website should integrate a blog:

1) Search engines love blogs

2) People love blogs

Search engines love blogs

• Great opportunity to use long-tail keywords (e.g. ‘Green Radley handbags’)

• Visibility for your products• Extra pages for your website• Bonus links and traffic from other websites

People love blogs

• No corporate-ese• Free advice• Stuff to share• Sign me up!

What to write?

“I’m a retailer: I’ll blog about my products!”

Content for your blog

Remember: Make it interesting!

Yes NoTips and advice Sales copyExciting updates Boring “news”Opinion pieces Bad-mouthing

competitorsMultimedia Plain text

Blogging and social media• Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram,

Tumblr and YouTube all offer opportunities for retailers.

• Use your blog to tie them all together.

My blog about this presentation

Reaching out to other bloggers

1. Make your own blog really awesome2. Follow other bloggers on Twitter3. Start talking!

Case study: Kaleidoscope

Our brief

To bring more traffic to Kaleidoscope’s e-Commerce website

and improve brand visibility overall.

Guest articles written for …

Kaleidoscope’s blog:

• Brought an extra 2,500 unique monthly visitors to the website

• Drove traffic to the brand’s Facebook page (and vice versa)

• Created opportunities for PR within leading industry publications

Crunching the numbersWebsites with blogs get 55% more traffic than

static websites.

They also get:

• 97% more inbound links • 434% more indexed pages

(Figures from Hubspot)

And yet ...

80% of company blogs are abandoned after fewer than 5

posts

(Figures from IBM)

Conclusion

Running a blog is:

• Great for SEO

• Great for PR

• … but you’ve got to keep it updated!

Emily Hill, CEO, Write My Site

Thanks for listening! @emilyhill1982@writemysiteuk.linkedin.com/in/emilyjanehill/emily.hill@writemysite.co.uk