Chad Rubin | From the blog of Nicholas C. Rossis, author of science fiction, the Pearseus epic fantasy series and children's bookI have often posted in the past tips on blogging. However, when Skubana recently contacted me with his idea for a guest post, I was intrigued. E-commerce blogging? What’s that all about? It turns out they were simply talking about using your blog to promote your online business — in our case, book sales.

Skubana was founded by Chad Rubin. Chad is not just any guest blogger. He builds e-commerce businesses and is a top 250 Amazon Seller. Fresh out of college and Wall Street, he took his family vacuum business online and built his own direct-to-consumer e-commerce business called Crucial Vacuum. He grew it from 0 a $20 million dollar valuation in just 7 years. He co-founded Skubana with DJ Kunovac as an all-in-one inventory management solution that unifies omnichannel operations after the checkout.

What You Need To Know About E-commerce Blogging

For some time now, both e-commerce and blogging — especially in the field of e-commerce — have become a “science.” This science not only has the peculiarity of changing faster than the stock market, but also focuses on key Internet marketing issues such as generating traffic, leads, and customers. Also, just like the stock market, it has already taken a few industries to bankruptcy.

The truth is that these two areas will always keep changing. At the same time, they are not so difficult to understand. It is a matter of knowledge and perseverance. And if we can harness their power, we can achieve greatness.

According to my experience, the best we can do is examine these two areas not as a whole but as partners. So, I will first explain the topic of e-commerce and then will step into blogging for two basic reasons:

First, because we will learn how to pair “apples with apples.” Even though we can study them separately, we have to make blogging and e-commerce work as a team to achieve the best possible outcome.

Second, the area of blogging provides more changing trends than that of E-commerce, so we need to understand how to manage it “within” the E-commerce context.

E-commerce

E-commerce is really pure digital commerce. That is to say, selling online. It has been with us in some way or other since teleshopping was first invented in 1979 by Michael Aldrich, who connected his computer to a television and then to a telephone line with the idea of facilitating trade without people having to leave their homes.

Some 35 years later, an estimated 12-24 million online stores have sprung up worldwide. E-commerce is still growing fast, it’s powerful, and it needs to create a great shopping experience for users.

And it is to this platform that the traffic from our blog will lead, thus generating sales… this is our store!

There are three main types of E-commerce, each with its own particular needs. However, they can all benefit from blogging:

• One business selling to another is what we call a B2B (Business-To-Business) service.
• A business selling to a customer is a B2C (Business-To-Consumer) service.
• A customer selling to a customer is a C2C (Consumer-To-Consumer); for example, Craigslist or e-bay.

Now let’s jump to blogging

Heck no, blogging is no longer just a space to share your personal life. Rather, blogging is one of the most powerful areas to promote your marketing strategy. Here are the steps necessary to give us the most success:

Three Do’s and three Don´t about your e-commerce blog’s content:

  1. Only share posts that bring value to readers and potential clients.
  2. Share posts that create an opportunity to build a relationship with industry influencers.
  3. Post in a way that makes your content easy/desirable to share.

Do not:

  1. Post someone else’s content, especially without approval. Offer unique content.
  2. Share yesterday’s news. Be relevant. Answer this question: what will people be doing tomorrow?

Why build an e-commerce blog?

What makes for a successful blog? Traffic and engagement.

What makes for a successful e-commerce business? Sales, of course.

So, combining the two, we need traffic and engagement to generate sales. And here’s why you need a blog in your E-commerce business: does the idea of being able to place your “physical” store on a “street” where human traffic never ends while every look goes into your product sound good to you?

Well, this is what we call Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and blogging within an E-commerce context can help with that, ultimately creating the conversion (i.e. sale) we are looking for. Don’t forget: bad blogging equals fewer sales and good blogging equals more sales.

So what do we really need to know about good blogging practices?

Here it is in three simple steps:

  1. You may lack the time to work on your blog. That’s perfectly understandable, as is delegating the work to someone else. Before doing so, though, weigh the pros and cons. Given enough time, you may be able to familiarize yourself with your blog. And no one can write about your business with the same passion as you, right? Practice makes perfect and writing a few posts may give you the confidence you need to run it. Even if you then end up delegating it to someone else, you will now know how to explain your goals to the people who will eventually perform this task for you.
  2. Promote your content relentlessly. No person or program can perform this task for you. If you don’t want to do it, chances are you won’t see the desired traffic or conversions. Of course, there are several ways to do this. Some don’t cost a penny. Others require an investment. The former include blog comment marketing, email outreach, social media, and marketing forums for example. The latter include strategies where you can invest money with good ROI, such as Quuu Promote, Google Adwords, and social media ads.
  1. How often should you blog? The majority agrees that a couple of posts per week are fine (assuming they’re good posts, of course). Keep in mind that blogging is all about perseverance, not speed.

Focus on problem-solving

By now, it should be clear how these two areas — blogging and e-commerce — interact with each other and that a well-developed strategy can mean the difference between selling and not selling.

There is one more important point to remember: the more a business helps solve a particular problem for people, the more it will sell. So, focus on helping others and you will be helping yourself and your business.

After all, the web is saturated with useless content. People will leave your blog with a single click if it’s not interesting to them. And if you’re not contributing anything of value to your potential clients, you are not creating value for your E-commerce store to your business.

Shares and reviews are powerful both to build and to destroy a business, so take care of them.

Finally, from my personal experience, always bring the” human factor” into your blogging. Don’t forget it’s a human on the other side of the network, and it’s their need you’re trying to satisfy.

Now, write, solve, and sell!