Blogs have moved on considerably since their arrival in the mid-90s. Originally created as a pretty nifty way to keep a diary in this digital age, blogging has developed into an internationally popular hobby. In fact, a new blog is created every half a second. Some bloggers have even managed to go pro, converting their frequent blog posts into an income stream.
Although many blogs remain a transcript of their owners’ personal lives, blogging is also a highly effective marketing tool across many industries. Adult e-commerce owners: are you blogging your business? You should seriously consider it. A regularly updated blog boasting relevant, top quality content doesn’t just educate and entertain your visitors – it boosts your website’s SEO.
Including blogging in your Search Engine Optimisation strategy leads to higher numbers of organic traffic to your e-commerce. Traffic who will not only have more easily found your website, but may be persuaded to become a paying customer while they’re there. Creating a blog for your e-commerce isn’t the only blogging-themed marketing route available to you, but it’s a great place to start.
Building Your Blog
Supporting your e-commerce with a great quality blog will help raise the visibility of your adult business online. A well-maintained blog helps to increase the elusive ‘footfall’ of web-based retailers.
Do consistently high levels of organic traffic sound good to you? Then stop fretting over those special offer graphics for a moment, and start building your blog.
There are two main ways to create a blog for your online store. You can use a blogging facility integrated with your e-commerce platform (if it has one) or you can install a blog which is linked from your main website, or installed alongside.
Current SEO trends advise that the most effective way to install your blog is in a subfolder, not a different domain. Therefore, it’s better to create http://www.myshop.com/blog/ rather than http://blog.myshop.com/.
Once your e-commerce blog is built, you’ll need to write and publish some blog posts so that even your very first visitor has something interesting to read. How do you capture and keep your audience’s attention? What sort of themes will persuade a reader to bookmark your blog so they can visit regularly? Your blog posts clearly need to be not only relevant to your adult business, but informative and entertaining.
A blog can be extremely effective as part of your business SEO plan – especially if you ensure you only publish content which is great quality and in keeping with your brand’s ethos. With so much to keep in mind, even deciding what you’re going to write about can seem like a daunting task.
Growing Your Blog Audience
Ok, so you’ve created your introductory blog posts and published them on your new and beautifully designed blog. Where’s all the traffic? Why aren’t there thousands of happy visitors being converted into paying customers?
There’s a lot more to it than publishing some blog posts then enjoying instantaneous success, sorry to say. For e-commerce businesses who don’t have a high volume of traffic or the support of a huge social media following, achieving a consistent visitor-to-customer conversion rate goes beyond crafting brilliant blog posts and waiting for the cash to roll in.
Social media is a fantastic promotional tool for your adult business and blog. For now though, let’s explore another blog-based marketing strategy.
Sexuality Bloggers
As well as running your own blog to support the marketing of your e-commerce, there are several established sexuality bloggers who provide various marketing services.
Adult industry bloggers (commonly known as sex bloggers) can help your e-commerce become more visible in terms of both organic and direct traffic. Backlinks from search-engine-authoritative sex blogs are incredibly valuable, as are contextual mentions of your adult business in blog posts and your engagement with the sex blogging community via social media.
How can you find sex bloggers who offer marketing support to adult industry businesses?
Gone are the days of browsing for relevant blogs then sifting through hundreds of blog rolls to create a ‘network spreadsheet’. Due to the lower levels of censorship for the adult industry on Twitter, this is where you will find the vast majority of sex bloggers. You can use Twitter’s search box, related hashtags and the ‘similar account’ algorithms to find more sex bloggers than you can shake a body-safe dildo at.
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