Blogging is considered the fastest medium to reach more target audience. How about using your blog posts as the medium for your business start up? Pretty interesting and novel right? So did many think the same. Based on a survey conducted in the year 2010, almost 44% of the bloggers are reported to have utilized their blog pages for business promotion. Take a look at some of these websites that market their products using the blog strategy –
Michael Ruhlman is a cookbook author and writes blogs to sell kitchen products
Irwin Weiner Interiors is a home decoration website, known to utilize their blog page – ‘Design To Share’ for selling of interior design accessories such as lamps, dishes, vases,etc.
Content marketing is a powerful search engine optimization strategy that not only helps the bots to index additional pages that ultimately boosts a website’s rank on the SERP, but makes the brand stand out as a leader by providing valuable insights to selected target audience.
The Three Benefits To Achieve From Converting A Blog Post Into An E-commerce Site
Posting a blog brings a three way communication to benefit from, if you can convert it into an e-commerce site. Setting up an e-commerce retail shop online is not solely about how to make the maximum number of sales. There are a lot of other factors that come to play, like maintaining a good public relationship with your customers and new prospects, making sure you are in the top ten list on the first SERP and also ensuring that each day you are growing stronger and bigger.
A blog post plays a very pivotal role if you are to derive all these benefits under one umbrella and that must be the reason why a blog page is so important when setting up a website. Let’s take you through each of the following benefits to earn from utilizing a blog post as an e-commerce medium.
Who Can Earn Benefits From A Blog Post?
The Customers
- The only way to interact online is via a website, and blogs represent a more human side of the company the customers find easy to engage with.
- Some blog posts provide valuable DIY tips and additional information. Not every customer visits a site to make a purchase and it is this particular section of website visitors who keep a timely track of your regular posts online.
- Customers enjoy a seamless experience when a blog section is integrated to a website.
- Readers engage better with a website only when they realize you are an expert in your forte and can guide them properly. A blog post helps the customers to able to rely better and therefore builds a sense of trust between the purchaser and the retailer.
The Organization
- In the online world, it is hard for consumers to identify and place trust on any particular brand as such. An engaging blog content on the other hand helps an organization to establish itself on good grounds in front of the reader’s eyes. So, when they are in dire need of a service that is related to your niche, they know whom to turn towards.
- Blogs are supposed to bring a reader closer to the website products and services. Therefore, an organization must be ready to take the advantage when the time is ripe, with specific Call To Actions that will generate conversions.
- Integration of an existing blog site into a website can turn out to be cost effective since it helps to reduce the maintenance cost.
- With a blog, an organization can promote a business with a two way strategy – by encouraging engagement of more traffic as well as the loyal followers.
The Website’s Search Engine Rank
- Google’s search engine bots love a website that supplies rich quality content. Websites that generate good quality content help the bots to index their pages, that in turn, will lead to better ranking of the websites on the results page.
- A combination of both on-site and off-site blogging helps in better ranking of a website. An off-site blog provides back links that help to bridge a way for readers to land on an on-site blog page. Back links bring in more traffic to a website, thus improving a website’s search engine rank.
This clearly explains the reason why content marketing is one of the most powerful search engine marketing tool online, and a very good reason why start-ups or any business organization can effectively start with monetization of a blog just like an e-commerce website.
How to Monetize a Blog
But how do you monetize your blog? There are many ways to monetize a blog and following these simple steps can help you build up an e-commerce site for your own business:
1. How to convert your WP blog into WordPress website?
If you have an existing WordPress blog page, then you can make it look more like a website by adding a static page separately and then configuring it to the blog page. This is simple to do. Just follow these steps to make your WP blog page look more like a website.
Step 1 – Select the ‘Pages’ section on the left side of your dashboard for adding a new home page.
Step 2 – Turn off the social share buttons and the comment section from the settings and publish it after labeling the page as ‘Welcome’.
Step 3 – Now add a new page by clicking on the ‘Add New’ from the ‘Pages’ section. Label this page as ‘Blog’ before you publish it.
Step 4 – Change the Front Display Page from the Admin panel, by clicking on the ‘Reading’ option from the ‘Settings’. You may also decide which pages to put display on the home page and which on the blog page.
Step 5 – After you are done, click to save the changes.
Check to see the ‘Welcome’ page appear as the ‘Home’ page of your site and a separate page titled as the ‘Blog’ page, where all your blog posts would be present. You may change the ‘Welcome’ label and rename it.
2. Integrating Plugins To Your Blog Page
There are several plugins available online, which you can integrate in your blog for extended functionalities. There are many plugins that help to boost up your blog page’s performance with features like shopping carts, promotional ads, CTAs, product information and many more. Here is a list of three popular plugins that you can make use of in your blog page-
WooCommerce
You can integrate the Woo Commerce plugin to provide your blog page with multiple features like product inventory management, payment gateway, purchase and transaction notification alert, shipping of goods and other selling options that help to make your website more informational and interactive.
WP E-Commerce
The WP E-Commerce plugin lets you to configure your blog using features like language, localization, PayPal integration, tax rates, product and brand information management and many others. The plug-in is easy to install and set-up, and offers a good shopping experience to readers who visit a blog page to look for more information.
OIO Publisher
The OIO Publisher is a php script ad manager plugin that helps you to take full control of the advertisements on your WP website. You can directly upload information, images and even make a payment transaction using this plugin.
The extension offers several payment modules like PayPal, Google Checkout and Alertpay from where you can select the one that best suits your needs. Other than this, an advertiser can avail features like inventory ad listing on the private advertisement banner, daily ad report statistics, conducting affiliate programs, and keeping a detail track of the number of conversions made via clicks, CTR rates and impressions made from every purchase.
But if you seek for a more creative strategy to use your blog for business promotion, then these are the following tips that you might want to have a look at.
Using other methods to monetize your e-commerce blog page
1. Free Books / Webinars
A great way to start brand building is by developing a sense of trust in the minds of your audience, and there is no better way to do this than by offering free service and tips. This helps in the long run, since your customers can easily test your service and then decide whether to convert or not.
A good service will always satisfy your customer thus helping you to build a strong client-organization bond that will benefit both in the long run. You can ask them to subscribe for your newsletter or apply for a free trial at the end of your blog.
2. Special Offers And Promotions
Special promotions like discounts and free vouchers create more buzz. Clients would like to avail this offer and therefore decide to convert. You need to discover new techniques like enter into a joint collaboration with some other brand, whose service you feel would benefit the client if used together with your product. However, this type of marketing initiative largely depends on the kind of promotion campaign you plan to run.
3. Product Showdown
This type of post is a little different from the general blog that you have been posting so long. While a common blog will serve more or less like a free webinar for readers, this will act as a product demonstration with a little twist; this is called the ‘Product Showdown’.
In product showdown, you make your products and services fight the battle against each other and then ask for your reader’s opinion. This would turn out to be more effective if thought from the shoes of your loyal customers, since they might have already used your product or service and will engage better. Readers might also begin referring to your blog as a user review podium, since the comment section flooded with interaction from users who have already used the products mentioned in the blog page, will give them an idea whether to make the purchase or not.
4. Case Studies
Presenting facts in front of your readers will help you to establish a sense of authority within your domain. People can learn from your case studies and utilize your experience to their own benefit. This will help you stand out as one whom they can turn up to whenever they are in need of a helping hand. A great way to improve your brand’s reputation.
5. Introducing Moving Infographic In Your Content
You will find a number of blog posts that come integrated with infographics. However, what you have not yet found is that moving infographics can grab more attention than a static one. Infographics turn out to be a dead piece of content after everyone is done seeing it. You can revive this old piece by giving it some motion and then using it creatively in your content. Moving infographics make the display of the data along with the visualization more interesting.
6. Email Newsletter
The email sign up box that you see on a web page is a great way to collect leads and target audience, and can bring more prospects when implemented in the blog page. The way you position your newsletter sign up box can play an important role when drawing the desired attention. Take a look at the below mentioned statistics
The Pop Up Email Sign Up Box
The pop up sign up email newsletter box helps to generate a maximum of 1 to 3 percent readers from a blog page
The Side Bar Email Sign Up Box
This can draw attention from maximum of .5 to 2 percentage readers, who visit a blog page
The Email Sign Up Box That Tails At The End Of A Blog
This type of email newsletter subscription box tailing at the end of a blog, helps to draw a maximum of .75 to 2 percent of attention from readers.
The Email Drip System
The email drip system can generate a maximum of 5 percent target leads,where for every 100 mails generated; at least 5 will convert.
7. The Use of Relevant Personas
There are times when a blog might be drawing the attention of a large number of traffic, but somehow it is not making any relevant conversion. This is because not everyone might be liking your post.
For example, you might have written a brilliant review on a Nikon DSLR for your next blog post. However, this might not attract everyone’s attention. Reason? Well, first – Not everyone is a DSLR freak and second – not everyone’s hobby is photography. You can therefore, only draw conversions from a certain segment of the traffic who are searching for the Nikon DSLR keyword.
On the other hand, there are some who are not interested to know which brand is the best. They are looking for a DSLR in general and therefore, the appropriate usage of keywords here should be either second hand DSLRs or simply DSLRs.
8. Setting Up Promotional Ads For Instant CTAs
Sometimes, it is necessary to divert a reader’s attention on advertisements that you know are relevant to what you have written on your blog.
There are two types of CTA ads that can be used effectively on a blog for better conversions. They are as follows –
The Static Ad – This remains static on its place. If you want a good reference of a static ad, then do visit Neil Patel’s blog page (which is said to generate as many as .94% clicks) to get an idea of how to design your advertisement.
The Scrolling Ad – The scrolling ad moves along with you as you scroll through a blog page. This kind of an ad may seem annoying, however, they are great attention seekers that can compel your reader to click the Call To Action.
Takeaway
Monetizing your blog using a little bit creativity is a great way to begin your e-commerce online. However, do ensure that your blog page has over 20,000 followers before you think of implementing these ideas in your content marketing strategy.