Should you start a blog for your boutique?
Yes! Blogging is a great way to get more traffic, boost search engine rankings, and engage your website visitors.
Get more traffic
Writing blog posts gives you fresh content to share with your customers, email subscribers, and social media followers. You can create beautiful images to share on Pinterest and Instagram and share something other than product photos. Blog posts can generate more traffic long-term because they can remain on your website forever. On the other hand, products have to be removed when they've sold out and if you've shared those products on social media sites they may now contain a broken page link. (This probably matters most for Pinterest because pins can stay viral for a length of time.)
Boost SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Search engines favor long-form content with relevant keywords. Google crawls websites regularly but it can sometimes take a few weeks for it to have an effect on your search ranking. This can be a problem for shop owners with quick product turnover. If you stock your inventory and sell out quickly that's amazing but the downfall is that by the time Google started crawling your website, you removed the pages because the products sold out. Blog posts can remain on your website forever and therefore might rank higher in web search results.
Engage your website visitors
Pageviews are important! Writing engaging content means your visitors will spend more time on your website and click through more pages. Having blog posts you can share repeatedly can also help you stay up on your social media scheduling and include the posts in your sales funnels.
How to start blogging for your boutique
The easiest way to start is to use the blog page on Shopify. I don't recommend doing this.
Blogging directly on your ecommerce platform is going to give limitations to what you're able to do. It might not matter now but it could make a huge difference if you want to scale your business in the future. I recommend looking into Squarespace or self-hosted Wordpress for starting your blog and then connecting it to your online shop. You can connect your blog to your shop by including links in the navigation menus or you can embed products directly into the pages of your blog with Shopify's but it now buttons.
Now, you could start blogging directly on your Shopify website. But I only recommend doing this if you are certain that your online shop is the only way you want to make money online. Before you decide, hop over to this post: 9 ways to make money blogging
Click here for a tutorial on starting your blog cheap!
Here are some Blog post ideas to consider when blogging about your boutique
Feature an awesome photo shoot. Great photos get shared repeatedly online. People are always looking for inspiration for their next projects or their own shoots. Wouldn't it be great to be the one inspiring people and setting a trend? Even if the exact products in your photos are sold out you can showcase embed similar products into the post.
"5 ways to dress-up a basic cardigan". Is there a clothing item you almost always have in stock? Writing a blog post about this item is a great way to get buyers on your website. You can then use the post to promote the current cardigans, or whatever items, you have in stock.
Feature your seasonal line. Have a post featuring your latest styles and update it regularly. Keep the URL the same so you continue getting traffic from when it was shared in the past. This is a little traffic tip that works especially well with Pinterest.
Write a post about your MLM. A lot of boutique owners are also members of a direct sales company. Blogging gives you the opportunity to tie both of your businesses together.
