The retail market is saturated with competitors — both brick-and-mortar and eCommerce — and consumers want more value from the brands they do business with. A retail blog is one way to deliver the additional value consumers crave (in addition to tactics like video marketing, social media, and more). It can be a crucial competitive differentiator and a powerful product marketing tool that can increase profits. However, taking advantage of the benefits of blogging for retailers means you first need to grow your retail blog.
Whether you’re just getting started with your retail blog or you’re ready to start driving more traffic to your existing blog, we’ll share some valuable advice and best practices to help you reach your goals in this article.
Growing a retail blog is much like growing any other blog, although there are some specific tactics you can implement to cater to the things retail consumers are looking for, such as:
- Publishing informative posts that show readers how to use your products
- Providing rich visuals and high-quality photos so visitors can explore products in detail
- Tying your retail blog to other marketing channels, such as embedding shoppable Instagram posts in your blog articles
- Focus on solving customers’ problems
- Use storytelling instead of product promotion
- …and more
For more proven strategies and tips for growing a retail blog, we reached out to a panel of blogging experts and retail bloggers and asked them to answer this question:
“What’s your number 1 tip for growing a retail blog?”
Meet Our Panel of Blogging Experts & Retail Bloggers:
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Keep reading to learn what our panel had to say about the top strategies for growing your retail blog you can start implementing today.
Michal Suski
Michal is the Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder at Surfer, a content intelligence platform that bootstrapped to $7 million ARR in four years. He manages a team of five product development experts.
“My number 1 tip for growing a retail blog is to use topical clusters, pillar pages, and competitive analysis. Creating topical clusters (or ‘themes’) around your blog posts helps you structure related topics into groups. This allows you to develop pillar pages that offer an authoritative overview of each topic, allowing search engines to rank them more prominently for relevant searches. Finally, leveraging competitor analysis tools can help identify what your competitors are doing well — giving you ideas on how to improve your own content strategy as well as helping you stay up-to-date with trends in the industry.”
Aaron Jerez
Aaron Jerez is the CEO and founder of Home Bar Select. Home Bar Select is an e-commerce store providing luxury home goods.
“My number one tip for growing a retail blog is to focus on creating high-quality, valuable content that truly resonates with your readers. This means writing engaging and helpful posts that provide useful information to your audience and make them want to return for more.
To do this, it’s important to research topics related to your industry, listen to the feedback of your readers, and stay up to date on any new trends or developments. Also, readers appreciate content that is both informative and entertaining. They also want to know that the blog they are visiting is up-to-date with relevant news and insights. By focusing on creating high-quality content, you will be able to attract new readers, engage existing ones, and ultimately increase your blog’s audience.
Beyond simply producing quality content, it’s important to promote your retail blog. Share links on social media (such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn) to get your blog out there. You can also consider guest blogging or partnering with other bloggers in the retail industry to reach an even wider audience.”
Melanie DiSalvo
Melanie DiSalvo is the founder of Virtue + Vice. Melanie has over 12 years of supply chain experience and currently works with over 200 retail brands.
“The best advice I can give is to collect emails and use them to start a conversation with your audience instead of pitching them. Ask them what interests them, what they are struggling with, etc., and then create content around that. Brands often get so focused on converting customers they forget about the user experience. In a time where AI is becoming more and more popular, brands need to become more human.”
Aktug Dogan
Aktug is the CEO and Co-Founder of Refermate.
“Optimizing your blog for mobile use, desktop use, and use through third-party apps is one of the most effective ways to grow your retail blog. Through personal experience, I’ve learned that ease of accessibility draws the most traffic through sheer convenience. Users want convenience when they’re shopping, reading, and even just browsing. The best way to make their experience on any platform convenient is through optimization no matter their device.”
Karl Tippins
Karl Tippins is the Editor in Chief of Pension Times. He is a finance writer with experience in writing about various aspects of the finance industry, from individual financial matters and planning to private equity and corporate finance.
“Create informative ads. Take advantage of social media platforms. Over 4.26 billion people are using social media worldwide, which makes social media platforms a very useful tool to promote your website or blogs. Make sure you’re creating quality and informative blogs that will catch their attention. It is a great way to attract readers, which benefits your brand. The higher the engagement, the more your social media content appears on different sites. This will not only create high engagement and exposure but will also build familiarity with potential clients.”
Ai Hiura
The current CMO at Faverie, Ai Hiura is a fashion, eCommerce and content expert. She has over 10 years of experience in the fashion industry, developing innovative marketing strategies for some of the world’s leading brands. Ai is also a mom to two boys and one girl, and she loves cooking and home décor. In her spare time, she enjoys time with her family.
“My number one tip for growing a retail blog is to stay consistent. Consistency is key when it comes to creating content and publishing it regularly. That means taking the time to brainstorm ideas, write posts, schedule them ahead of time, and promote them consistently. This will help you build trust with your readers and establish yourself as an authority in the retail industry. Additionally, make sure to use relevant keywords within your posts so that you can optimize for SEO and reach more potential customers. Finally, don’t forget about social media. Posting content on platforms such as Pinterest or Instagram can quickly spread awareness about your blog.”
Tyler Seeger
Tyler Seeger is an Entrepreneur and Managing Director of Retirement Being — a well-known, free-to-use solution for seniors seeking a reimagined and empowered living community.
“Make sure you pick the proper website host. The worst thing a small company can do is choose an inappropriate platform while creating its website. If you select the incorrect platform, not only will it increase the amount of money you spend, but it will also restrict the amount of growth your company is capable of. There are many different hosting firms, each offering various hosting options that can accommodate websites of varying sizes. As a result, this impacts how much your website will cost. As your company expands, you may want extra hosting resources to accommodate the additional traffic. When that time comes, you’ll generate enough money to consider an update worthwhile.”
Paul Haywood
Paul Haywood is the founder of Ecommerce Gold, which is a blog dedicated to helping people start and grow eCommerce businesses.
“My 1 tip for anyone looking to grow a retail blog would be to focus on topical authority.
It can have many benefits for your blog, including:
- Providing value to your readers as you are covering everything on that subject
- Establishing your authority on the subject, which can lead to higher rankings
- Ranking for many different keywords, which can lead to more traffic
- Lots of internal linking opportunities
- Increased chance of getting organic backlinks
In my opinion, there aren’t any other aspects of blogging that have so many benefits, but you retain control over the whole process.”
Matthew Roberts
Since its inception, Matthew Roberts has been using his creative vision and excellent insight into company management to enhance operations as one of the co-founders and Chief Operating Officer at My Choice Financial, Inc.
“Let images do the talking. Adding images to your blog not only makes it look lively and attractive but also makes it an excellent source of information, prompting readers to subscribe. When you write how-tos and listicles, images make the steps, examples, and ideas more understandable to the readers. On the other hand, writing case studies and resource lists will also become more comprehensible — for example, using images to turn hard-to-grasp data into infographics.”
Carlos Barros
Carlos Barros is the Director of Marketing at Epos Now. Epos Now is a cloud-based software provider specializing in the design and manufacture of electronic point of sale solutions.
“My number one tip for growing a retail blog is to develop your content strategy and create helpful, original content that will be of value to potential customers.
When it comes to developing a content strategy, the key is understanding what type of topics you want to address in each post. For example, if you’re promoting products or services related to fashion trends, then it would make sense for some of your posts to focus on those trends and how they relate back to the products or services you’re offering. By providing valuable information like this, readers may be more likely to purchase from your business. Creating distinct categories within each post focusing on different aspects such as lifestyle tips or product reviews can help readers navigate additional angles when searching specific topics relating back to your business.”
Aviad Faruz
Aviad Faruz is the CEO of Faruzo. Aviad is an eCommerce business owner running a business of personalized jewelry and accessories in NY, US.
“Networking is a valuable way to promote and grow your retail blog. Networking works in different ways, including collaboration with thought leaders of the industry and connecting with friends and families to read and share content on social media platforms. You will need help from others to share your blogs or even start a conversation. Going to events is also a part of networking, initiating discussions about your industry, discussing trends and challenges, and subtly sneaking in your blog introduction. This way, people will learn about your blog, visit it, and and share your content if they find it useful. More shared content means more traffic to your blog.”
Alex Williams
Alex Williams is an eCommerce business owner, a Certified Financial Planner, and the CFO of FindThisBest (based in Temasek Boulevard, Singapore), a comprehensive guide for shopping retail products.
“Nothing works better than adding a personal touch to your tone when writing for your retail blog. Customers are done with buying products for the sake of it. Something more must appeal to them. The number one tip to make that happen is to constantly describe your brand journey.
This will automatically add a personal element to your voice. And customers will connect with the brand immediately. Try taking the story-telling angle. You can describe the brand vision, the reason behind selling specific products, and the aspirations. Customers will feel you are genuinely interested in showing that side of the brand. Plus, they will form a long-lasting relationship with your brand that goes beyond purchasing.”
Peter Varadi
Peter Varadi is the co-founder and CEO of MarketGap.Pro, where they help shoppers gain key insights into their products of interest directly on Amazon’s page.
“The best way to grow your retail blog is by building a robust email marketing list. Use your leads advantageously and email them details regarding your product offerings. Via your marketing list, you can build powerful connections and market your items to the right audience. If this seems challenging, you can use an email marketing tool to streamline subscriber management and send regular emails about your upcoming products. When sending mass emails, make sure to use a catchy headline to increase engagement.”
Devin Schumacher
Devin Schumacher is the Founder of SERP Co, SERP Agency, SERP AI, and a Member of the Forbes Agency Council.
“The biggest key, by far, is to find products with LOW keyword difficulty and HIGH search volume. Brand terms are also an overlooked and incredibly profitable target. Go after the terms with that ratio (low KD, high SV), and your traffic will explode.”
Marc Hardgrove
Marc Hardgrove is the CEO of TheHoth.
“SEO is the most crucial aspect of a retail-driven blog. Analytical software solutions like Google Analytics allow you to discover and explore trending content at that given time. Using this software, a retail blog can include as many trendy keywords as possible and make it an SEO-friendly goldmine. SEO gives you more viewership, which automatically builds your credibility. This cycle is set in motion when you first orient your retail blog according to SEO needs.”
Jessica Kats
Jessica Kats is an e-commerce and retail expert at Soxy.
“Email marketing and social media platforms will surely help you to grow your blog, but that won’t save you if your content is boring. Fluff finds its way to the content of every blog. Work on your product descriptions and write stories about your successes and happy clients.
The best way to ensure that your content has relevance with your audience is to have a conversational tone in your content. Your content needs to be engaging, and for that, add games and questionnaires for your audience.”
Alvin Wei
Alvin Wei is the co-founder and CMO of SEOAnt.
“Niche down and link build with reputable sites. The first step to successfully growing a retail blog is to niche down to appeal to the specific target audience your content will best serve. Retail blogs focusing on broad topics fail to attract a loyal readership, which is necessary for continued growth.
With the niche mastered and high-quality content coming out consistently, you can now focus on link-building opportunities through guest blogging to grow your domain authority and accelerate your blog’s growth.”
Nicole Bolton
Nicole Bolton is a fashion designer and the co-founder of Iconic Celebrity Outfits, where they help you dress like your favorite celebrity through a vast fashion collection.
“A great way to grow your retail blog is by regularly conducting keyword research. You can use Google trends to find trending topics and use them to your advantage. This will help your blog rank higher on Google search results. By doing this, you can make your content more visible and attract a larger audience. It also helps to focus on keyword placement, which significantly influences your ranking.”
Joshua Feinberg
Joshua Feinberg is a go-to-market content/blogging strategist and revenue growth consultant for tech startup CEOs, including SaaS startups targeting retailers in apparel, beauty, and footwear. Joshua is also CEO/co-founder of SP Home Run.
“To make your retail blog resonate, build a mini-media company within your marketing team that provides exceptional value to your most important buyer personas. Many retailers make the mistake of using their blogs as sales pitches for their products — kind of like the text version of HSN or QVC. However, the much bigger blogging opportunity centers around deeply understanding who your most important buyers are, what they care about, and their biggest goals and challenges.
Then build a holistic content strategy across your blog, social media, video, and email marketing that educates and builds trust with your most important buyers.
For another retail analogy, think about the editorial strategy used by Costco in its Costco Connection Magazine. Yes, ~20% of the pages, especially near the back of the long-time printed publication, are essentially product catalog pages. However, the magazine also publishes amazingly helpful editorial content related to its members’ biggest goals and challenges, putting its content on par with any mainstream media outlet (such as USA Today, Time, Homes & Gardens, or PCMag).
With the emergence of so many video opportunities, a retailer can showcase its team members as subject matter experts in so many ways, from live-streamed events to shorts. Therefore, a retailer’s blog provides a great repurposing opportunity for building reach in both organic search and social media while building email marketing reach that can be monetized as your own mini-media brand.
All this starts by creating detailed buyer personas that inform your blogging strategy so your company can build relationships with its readers before trying to extract monetization value from the blog.”
David Nge
David is a freelance developer and marketing consultant who primarily helps small business owners, consultants, and creative professionals set up their websites and get them off the ground.
“The best blogging tip for retail businesses is to build an email list. It’s easy to set up, and there are many free email marketing tools in the market (such as ConvertKit and Mailchimp).
Retail businesses can leverage a high-quality email list to accelerate sales campaigns, build brand loyalty, and encourage repeat purchases.
For example:
- Methodical Coffee, a small coffee retailer in South Carolina, created a ton of buzz around its Black Friday & Small Business Saturday Sale with one single email campaign.
- Victoria’s Secret’s email highlights all its latest seasonal products and offers free shipping to incentivize purchases.
- Sephora uses email to introduce new products in its store and encourages readers to discover new brands.”
Jessica Luna
Jessica Luna is a Marketing Analyst for Net Influencer.
“One important tip for growing a retail blog is to create high-quality, valuable, and relevant content that resonates with your target audience. Here are a few specific strategies you might consider to grow your retail blog:
- Understand your audience: Understand who your target audience is and what they are interested in. Conduct market research and surveys to understand their pain points, interests, and habits. Use this information to create content that is relevant and valuable to them.
- Optimize for search engines: Make sure your blog is optimized for search engines by including relevant keywords in your blog posts, meta tags, and URLs. Use alt tags for images and create internal links to other related blog posts. This will help your blog appear in search results when people search for topics related to your blog.
- Be consistent: Create a content calendar and stick to it. Consistently publishing new, high-quality content will help you attract and retain readers.
- Use visuals: Use images, videos, and infographics to make your blog more engaging and shareable. Visuals can help break up text, make your content more interesting, and help your blog stand out.
- Promote your blog: Use social media, email marketing, and other channels to promote your blog and drive traffic to it. You can also guest post on other blogs, participate in online communities, and run promotions or giveaways to attract new readers.
- Encourage engagement: Create opportunities for your readers to engage with your content, such as by leaving comments, sharing posts on social media, or participating in surveys or polls. Responding to comments and feedback will encourage readers to return and engage more with your blog.
- Measure and Improve: Use analytics tools to measure the performance of your blog, track traffic, and identify opportunities to improve. Use this data to decide what content to create, how to promote it and which channels to use.
Remember that building an audience for your retail blog can take time, so don’t be discouraged if you don’t see rapid growth immediately. Instead, focus on creating valuable content, building relationships with your audience, and constantly experimenting to find what works best for your blog.”
James Green
James Green is the Owner of Cardboard Cutouts.
“The best way to grow a retail blog in a fast and efficient way is to link it with your social media profiles where you already have a following. Starting a newsletter for your blog can also be advantageous, as many people are interested in email newsletters by voices they actually want to hear and read and learn from. Utilize all social media options to grow your blog and develop it into a profitable space for your retail business.”
Tory Gray
Tory is the Founder & CEO of the SEO consulting firm The Gray Dot Company.
“Make every post as interactive as possible. Simply showcasing your best products in your blog can help you gain some traction, but modern users expect to feel seen and heard by brands.
Create blogs that feature customers and fans using their favorite products in your line and build a UGC campaign so you can tie your posts back to Instagram and other social platforms.
Introduce interactive elements to each post so readers can share on their social media networks, vote for their favorite products, and chat with other customers in the comments. When your blog content promotes two-way conversations, they’ll always attract more interest than static posts.”
Maximilian Wühr
Maximilian is the Co-Founder & CGO of FINN. FINN is the most popular car subscription provider globally, with a $100mn revenue run rate in less than 3 years.
“Showcase questions, not products. Users that find your blog aren’t looking for thinly-veiled advertisements, so cater your content to answer common questions and offer real value rather than actively pushing your products onto readers.
You’ll build your blog quickly if you find the sweet spot for questions. You want to niche down from some of the broad search terms already highly coveted by massive retail brands, but you still want to be answering relatively popular questions. If no one is asking the question, it’s not worth your efforts.
Choose a mix of questions to build evergreen content (i.e., those that users will search for consistently over time) and trending topics so you can scoop a share of those users, too.
Prioritize pumping out relevant, helpful content, let your following grow, and users will naturally flock to your store more.”
Fernando Lopez
Fernando is the Marketing Director of the route planning SaaS Circuit and an ex-eBay and PayPal growth consultant.
“Use your posts to test and build credibility for your products. Users are constantly scouring the internet looking for proof that a purchase they’re considering is either their new Holy Grail or way too good to be true. If you showcase product reviews and honest testing experiences on your blog, users will flock to find out what the real product experience is like behind the marketing hype.
Of course, these reviews must be real and honest to provide practical value for readers and build credibility for your brand. Hire unbiased third parties to review your products that don’t have an ulterior motive. Product review posts also allow you to reach a 100% new audience that doesn’t know your product line or brand as they search for similar items or solutions.”
William Hogsett
William Hogsett is the Chief Executive Officer at Seota Digital Marketing.
“My number one tip for growing a successful retail blog is to consistently put out timely content that is relevant to retailers and business owners. Every year, the best practices change as the retail landscape shifts, and what worked last year may not be working now. Sticking to a consistent schedule lets your readers know when to expect your posts and makes it easy for them to share your latest posts.
Setting up a mailing list with exclusive emails is also a huge help when trying to grow your blog. Value-providing exclusive emails will make your readers feel like they’re in a special club with access to information that you don’t share with just anyone, which makes them more likely to read and engage with your blog.”
Victor Karpenko
Victor Karpenko is the CEO and Founder of SeoProfy.
“Our company is often approached by customers who want to get high positions in the search results of their online store. One of the methods to achieve this goal is the blog’s creation and constant content. The advantages of such a strategy are apparent:
- Creating additional internal links to raise the most profitable and frequently purchased products to the top
- Interesting articles to keep users on the site
- Increasing brand confidence
- Earning backlinks from third-party resources
My most important advice for successful retail blog development is to provide value for your website visitor. After all, only an exciting article that solves the problems of potential buyers will attract their attention. Describe the benefits of a product from your store in a blog post. Focus on customer benefit. Show how you can solve your problems, improve your life, and simplify or speed up routine tasks with a purchase.
Remember that your website visitors want to see more visual information, so your articles should have a lot of illustrations. Work on their uniqueness — take original beautiful photos and consider designing infographics. 3D visualization is desirable for each product. If the budget does not allow it, then post more photos. They must demonstrate the product from different angles and allow visitors to zoom in for a detailed examination. Remember that some users do not like to read texts but prefer to watch videos. A short video of up to one minute should contain the main points of your article.”
Rahul Vij
Rahul Vij is the CEO of WebSpero Solutions, a digital marketing agency.
“There are several important strategies for growing a retail blog.
Create content that readers crave.
As a blogger, it is your responsibility to ensure your audience is happy and engaged at all times. It is the only way they will keep returning to your blog.
Share a story.
Most regular readers love to read a story or even simple anecdotes that they can relate to. Thus, try to make your content slightly personal.
Maintain a balance.
Another way to make your readers interested in your content is by writing it in a conversational tone. However, while writing, make sure to maintain the distinction between the company brand and your personal brand identity.
Make use of visual aids.
Besides content, it is important to use eye-catching visual aids like images, videos, and infographics to make your content even more attractive and interesting for the readers.
Always come up with fresh ideas.
Fresh ideas keep readers coming back and helps to improve your blog’s ranking on the SERPs. In contrast, people who put up plagiarized content on their websites are often penalized.
Headlines are the apple of the eye.
At Least 80% of readers don’t go any further when they don’t like the headline or don’t feel connected with it. So, it is necessary to write a headline that can entice them deeper and make them want to read the whole article.”
Laura Rike
Laura Rike is a Pinterest Coach who helps high-performing business owners, content creators & influencers grow PROFITABILITY the right way with SUSTAINABLE systems.
“My recommendations are focused on behaviors that are related to Pinterest. My blog has a ton of helpful information, including case studies like this one, where we increased traffic for a food blogger by 30%. Practices like guest posting and SEO are definitely important, and many of them can also be applied to sharing content on Pinterest specifically, like using the proper keywords in your posts and image descriptions.
As you can see from the case study I shared above, being really clear on your target audience can help quite a bit. When you’ve dialed that in, you can get a better handle on what language they use in search boxes and increase your chance of being that top result.”
Installing social media share buttons on your retail blog is a proven strategy that can help improve brand awareness and get your products in front of a larger audience. With just one click, visitors can share your blog posts with their social networks, helping grow your blog and your business.
