www.shopify.com

This infographic from IMRG and eDigital Research contains some great stats on m-commerce growth from 2009 to 2012…

econsultancy.com
Check out this infographic from StartApp for more information on the benefits of mobile advertising.

startapp.com

A look at the channels shoppers picked this past holiday season found that modern technology such as mobile devices and search tools helped with buying decisions. Check out the infographic:

Source: Baynote

Advertisers are starting to spend a lot more on optimizing sites for mobile devices and are paying more for mobile SEO. Let’s see why:

shopvisible.com

Way #1: Everything has its proper time

Keeping your eyes peeled on events

Considering what’s on people’s minds at the moment will go a long way towards getting their attention. Consider the following points before you craft any marketing material:

• Day of the week: Will your promo material appear on a Manic Monday or on a TGI Friday? Will it appear the day before payday (when most people are just scraping by), or just after payday (when most people are feeling exuberant). If you have the flexibility, marketing according to the day is an excellent strategy to adopt.  
• Season: Are you sending off your ads in a hunker-down winter or a sizzling summer? Are the first flowers beginning to bloom, or are the first leaves beginning to fall? Don’t underestimate the role seasonal factors play in your customer’s buying decisions.
• Events: Is it the week before a big holiday (anticipation), or the week after one (let down)? Are the children going to be home or are they going to be out at school? Has there recently been a national tragedy, or is there a general sense of victory and euphoria? These “event” factors play a substantial role in the decision-making process. Even knowing what your target audience was watching on TV last night, or what kind of weather she’s experiencing today, can clue you in to her mood
• Financial: How are people feeling about money? Is it a time of cautious restraint, or is it a time for freer spending? The money issue, which is in as constant a flux as the stock market, plays a big factor in the decision as to when, where, and how to spend.

General seasonal changes are good indicators of buyer behavior; they are also “safe bets” when you can’t get other information.

Way #2: The proof of the pudding is in the buying 

Keeping your finger on the market's pulse

At the end of the day though, people are people. We don’t always react according to expectation.

That’s why you need to use some tools – to tell you real time behavior. If you can understand the method behind the madness, then you’re one-step smarter than they are, and you can tailor your media blasts accordingly. Here are a few tools to help you keep your finger on your customer’s pulse:

• Neilson http://www.nngroup.com/articles/
• News  https://news.google.com/
• Google Trends http://www.google.com/trends/

Way #3: Tried and true rules

Principles as solid as the rock of Gibraltar

When it comes to creating marketing and advertisement content, a few ideas (almost) universally ring true. These ideas are the bread and butter of advertising and they haven’t changed since the snake sold Eve on that forbidden fruit so many years ago:

• Respect the real individual: No one likes to be talked down to. Respect your audience, their sensibilities, and their time, and they’re more likely to hear what you have to say.
• The easier the better: No one wants to have to work too hard in order to get your message. Say it clearly and concisely and they won’t have to.
• Develop a personal connection:  Don’t ignore the “me” behind the wallet or pocketbook your customer carries around.
• Conflict and controversy (i.e. a good fight) is always interesting. Begin your campaigns with a good struggle, or a strong “difference of opinion,” and you’re almost sure to bring your audience along for the ride.

If your ecommerce store is not yet prepared to fully cash in on this big spend, it’s not too late to catch the wave. There is still a lot that you can do to increase holiday shoppers online sales.

 Need to boost your holiday sales fast? Get help here 

Here are some simple but powerful tips that can be implemented quickly and have a big impact on your overall holiday take.

8 Tips to Increase Holiday Online Sales

1. Boost Your Google Traffic

If you haven’t already started work on boosting your rankings for your main keywords, it’s probably too late to see any benefit this holiday shopping season. But that doesn’t mean that you should set SEO aside. Now is a great time to go after some long-tail, highly-specific keywords linking your products to holiday shopping.

It’s much easier to rank faster for long-tail keywords and, in our experience, they often have a higher conversion rate than broader keywords. For example, “personalized key chains Christmas gift free delivery” has a lot less competition than “personalized key chains.” It also has a lot less search volume, but this is off-set by the fact that the detailed nature of the search query indicates that this Googler is serious about taking out their wallet and buying NOW.

To cash in on Long-Tail search engine traffic, create blog posts, category pages and product pages that use on-page SEO criteria to target keywords that you have determined are potential winners for your store.

2. Update Meta-Tags to Get More Clicks

While where on the subject of Search Engine traffic, it’s a good idea to look at the pages that are currently bringing you traffic from Google. If you can improve the way they look in the SERPs (search engine results page), this can result in you getting more traffic, even without you working to boost your rankings.

For example, this might be my current listing:

Imagine I changed the listing to this:

By changing the meta-tag info (which is simple to do on many platforms), my Google listing becomes a powerful selling tool. (Note: It may take a little time for Google to register that you’ve updated your meta-tags.)

It’s all about tailoring your listing to get more clicks.

3. Get Serious About Local

Optimize your store of getting found via Google Places and other local search engines. This can be one of the fastest and easiest ways to increase your search engine traffic. Read more on how to do Local SEO for Ecommerce

4. Pin like Crazy

More and more people are using Pinterest as a search engine for gift ideas. So if you are not already using Pinterest, it could be an ideal way to get huge exposure for your products.

If your product has any sort of visual appeal, Pinterest is probably the easiest way to spread it virally. You will be amazed at how your product images will be pinned and re-pinned by random strangers around the world. Be sure to feature your products on the “Gifts” boards. Pinterest traffic has been shown to have the highest conversion rate of any social media traffic source -  so now is the time to boost your Pinterest presence.

5. Get a Mobile Site that Sells

If you do not already have a mobile version of your site, then you are simply leaving money on the table. Mobile ecommerce shopping is growing exponentially and this holiday season will be the “mobile gifting season.”

So now is the time to make sure your store is ready for mobile shopping.

6. Promote Gift Cards

According to this consumer research by Booz & Co., gift card sales are going to rise, as shoppers look for instant ways to buy gifts that are guaranteed to please. So make sure to offer gift cards prominently throughout your store, including on product pages. This will encourage wavering gift-buyer to make a purchase without having to decide on a particular item.

7. Declare War on Shopping Cart Abandonment

One of the easiest ways to increase your sales, even without additional marketing efforts, is to increase your conversion rate. For example, if currently 2% of your site visitors make a purchase, it can be relatively easy to increase that to 4% with a few simple tweaks of your checkout process. That’s a lot more money in your cash register, without spending a penny on ads!

Read this post offering simple tips on how to reduce shopping cart abandonment rate dramatically.

8. Upgrade your Hosting Capacity

Every year we hear of ecommerce store owners who are angry. They are really mad because their web hosts were not able to cope with spikes in traffic during the peak online holiday shopping season. This results in lost sales due to slow page-loading and crashing servers. It’s an ecommerce nightmare that can have a big impact on your overall profitability.

In truth, there is a lot that ecommerce stores can do to avoid this kind of disaster. Now is the time to make sure that your hosting plan is more than enough to cope with any traffic spikes. Losing sales because of server overload is just throwing money down the drain. Do EVERYTHING necessary to avoid this problem.

All these tasks are pretty simple, and you know that you should implement them. But since now is a busy time of year for ecommerce stores, you may feel like you don’t have the time.

Contact us to ask about New Edge Design’s Last-Minute Holiday Online Sales Booster Packages. We’re offer various combinations of the above services (and more) in comprehensive packages starting at just $999.

 To get started boosting your holidays sales ASAP, click here.  ]]> http://www.newedgedesign.com/increase-holiday-online-sales/feed/ 0 http://www.newedgedesign.com/viewed-your-profile-linkedin/ http://www.newedgedesign.com/viewed-your-profile-linkedin/#comments Wed, 31 Oct 2012 10:32:27 +0000 Naomi http://www.newedgedesign.com/?p=3024 Read More]]>

Yay! 14 people viewed my Linkedin profile. Now what?

Has Linkedin been sending you alerts about who viewed your Linkedin profile lately?

That’s cool information to know!

But how should you respond to these notifications? If you’re like most people, you’re not really sure.

The new alert system is part of a major upgrade and redesign that Linkedin has rolled out over the last month, making it even more useful as a professional networking platform. I’ve already written about some of the most important changes to the new Linkedin.

But this change in particular has really gotten people talking. It has long been possible to view a list of people who viewed your profile (you have to be logged in to Linkedin to see the list). But many members did not know about that feature or did not regularly use it.

Thanks to the new notifications, everyone now realizes that there are people looking at their Linkedin profile all the time. People that you don’t know, with promising sounding headlines, may be checking you out on the world largest professional network at this very moment.

This is a wake-up call for many of us.

Linkedin actually matters!

What you usually don’t know is why they are looking at your profile.

• Are they interested in doing business with you?
• Do they want to headhunt you?
• Did they just happen to stumble upon your profile while searching for an old friend with a similar name?

You may never know, but here are 3 ways you can respond to notifications that someone viewed your profile:

1.  Immediately send an invitation

Linkedin gives you the option to send an invite to connect with anyone who views your profile. No interrogation about whether you really “know” them is applied.

In my experience, 9/10 times they will quickly accept your invitation. In this way, you expand your network to new prospects that are most likely relevant to your professional goals. From now on, these people will see your updates and a relationship can be built from there.

2. Reach Out to Them Personally

After you’ve connected, you can send a message to people that you feel may be relevant contacts.

And No! Don’t spam them with a generic message selling your goods and services. That will probably kill the relationship before it even begins. Instead, send them a personalized, helpful message, such as:

Dear Eric,

Linkedin sent me a notification that you viewed my profile. I’m glad they did because it led me to view yours. I was interested to learn about your work and so I invited you to connect.

I’m curious to know if there was any particular reason you viewed my profile? Can I help you in any way?

Regards,

Naomi Elbinger

Content Marketing Manager
New Edge Design – http://newedgedesign.com
Web Development and Marketing for Maximum Online Sales

Many professionals, including myself, report higher response rates from Linkedin messages, relative to cold emails. So this kind of message is a great way to reach out to potential warm leads. (I couldn’t find any data on the open rates of Linkedin messages, so we have to rely on anecdotal evidence here.)

3. Smarten Up your Profile Page

Now that Linkedin is regularly reminding you that relevant prospects are viewing your profile, this should motivate you to ensure that it makes the right first impression.

The layout of your information has changed lately, and your “Headline”, image and description are more important than ever. The new endorsements feature can also be used effectively to give an impression of being tops in your field.

These are probably the main factors in a Linkedin profile that captures the right sort of attention, and generate not just views, but messages and leads.

So off you go! Check who viewed your Linkedin profile today – and get busy networking! ]]> http://www.newedgedesign.com/viewed-your-profile-linkedin/feed/ 8 http://www.newedgedesign.com/gift-registry-volusion/ http://www.newedgedesign.com/gift-registry-volusion/#comments Thu, 25 Oct 2012 13:29:30 +0000 Naomi http://www.newedgedesign.com/?p=3010 Read More]]>

Amazon and the big online department stores have long offered gift registries. But what about independent ecommerce stores built on Volusion? Can they also benefit from a gift registry feature?

What’s the Difference Between a Gift Registry and a Wishlist?

In order to save you confusion, let’s start by clarifying the terms “gift registry” vs. “wishlist.”

A Registry is set up by someone specifically to help others buy them gifts, usually around weddings, baby births, the holiday season and other occasions. A wishlist, on the other hand, might be set up purely for personal use, as a way to bookmark products that a shopper is interested in buying at a later time.

Some Wishlists can be shared with others and serve the same function as a gift registry. And that’s where the confusion starts, but in this article I’m going to give the two words their proper meaning.

How to Set Up a Wishlist in Volusion

This is very simple to do, as it is a native feature that is integrated with Volusion out-of-the-box.  For instructions on how to activate this feature, click here.

Be aware that this Wishlist will be visible to a registered customer who is logged in to your store, but no one else. They can’t share this list with anyone and it can’t function as a gift registry.

How to Set Up a Gift Registry in Volusion

Volusion does not come with proper gift registry functionality built-in and it cannot be added. The closest solution which Volusion offers is integration with Wishpot. Wishpot is an app that allows shoppers to easily create wishlists of items they would like to buy from many stores across the web. These lists can be shared with friends and serve as a gift registry.

As a gift registry solution, Wishpot has its pros and cons. On one hand, it’s a popular platform and it can be a good way to get exposure for your product and drive gift sales.

On the other hand, it is not a true gift registry, but rather a wishlist hosted on a massive network. Once someone clicks the “Add to Registry” button on your product page, they will be invited to get a Wishlist account. This could become a distraction from the buying process and could lead to shopping cart abandonment.

Unlike a Registry, which is exclusive to your site, on Wishpot your products will be competing for attention among the products of many other merchants. However for smaller stores that don’t have enough variety to support a full gift registry, this is probably more of a pro than a con.

What if you Want Your Own Gift Registry for Your Store?

At this time, there is no option for your own exclusive gift registry in a Volusion store. Bear in mind that Volusion is a hosted ecommerce solution and therefore your developer can’t simply add functions and extensions. This differs from Open Source ecommerce platforms, that allow a lot more flexibility for custom programming.

However, open source shopping carts come with their own challenges. Depending on your circumstances, you might do better with Volusion, even if you have to forgo a proper gift registry. Read this in-depth review of the pros and cons of Open-Source vs. Hosted Ecommerce Solutions.

If having a private gift registry is important to your business model, then we recommend using 3d Cart, which integrates smoothly with a custom gift-registry extension. Contact us to discuss if this can work for you.

If you are staying with Volusion, play around with their Wishpot integration. It may be a great gift registry solution for your business.

Let me tell you a very sad story of spammy SEO gone sour:

I own a company that offers historical translation services and we get most of our clients via Google… or at least we used to.

About a 18 months ago, I was feeling frustrated that my site was stuck around #6 on page 1 of Google for our main keywords. I had done everything right in terms of generating SEO-friendly content for the site, as well as natural link-building. It bothered me that none of the sites ranking above me were as relevant as mine.

Around that time, a famous make-money-online blogger started to promote her own (spammy) link-building service. It wasn’t cheap, but I knew that if we scored more translation projects, it would pay for itself. So I decided to give it a try. It gave OK results, but I didn’t go further.

Then in April 2012, disaster struck… AKA Google’s Penguin Update.

The bottom fell out of my rankings on my company site, and  traffic dropped about 80%. Web-based leads dried up almost completely.

Since then, our rankings have improved slightly but my previously profitable business is still very quiet.

What should I do?

Brenda

Brenda is certainly not alone.

Many other business owners are in the same boat. They invested in “grey hat” SEO services because it worked. Unfortunately, they are now paying a heavy price. Recent changes in Google’s algorithm have penalized sites with “unnatural” backlinks.

Google’s New Solution to Bad Links

Last week Google released its new Link Disavow Tool and it was created for people who have exactly this problem. As Google’s Matt Cutts said in the launch video, this tool is for people who have bought spammy links back to their site and now can’t get those links taken down. The tool allows us to report such links and ask Google not to take them into consideration when determining our rankings.

I appreciated that Matt was so candid about the nature of this problem and I’m actually feeling quite grateful to Google for providing hope to those of us who flagrantly did the wrong thing. (Read about my own experiment with buying spam links on Fiverr.)

This is an example of the kind of comment spam link that my $5 bought for me:

And yes, I’m embarrassed !

How to Use the Link Disavow Tool

Google’s Link Disavow Tool is just the right thing to help Brenda undo some of the damage to her site from spam links. Of course, this tool is brand new and it will be several months until we can get a clear picture of the impact of using the tool. But it is definitely worth a try.

This is what we did for Brenda’s site, step-by-step:

1. First we went to Google Webmaster Tools and chose the profile for the website in question.

2. In the left-column, we chose “Traffic”, then “Links to Your Site”

3. This gave me a list of 127 domains linking into her site. We downloaded this file and opened it in Excel.

4. In Excel, we deleted all of the good domains that represented genuine backlinks from quality sites – this was about 25% of the list. We cleaned up the file and then copy-pasted a list of about 100 domains into a .txt file. We inserted the word “domain:” before each name of each website (as instructed in this post on the Google Webmaster’s Tools blog). So the listings looked like this:

domain:antinoks.com
domain:sputnikmusic.com
domain:efactory.pl
domain:meonplus.com
domain:swisscorner.com
domain:wikipediamaze.com

5. We uploaded this .txt file using the Disavow Links Tool.

6. That’s all, folks.

Now we have to sit tight and wait a few weeks while Google uses this data to discount the disavowed links – and hopefully this will result in a noticeable improvement in rankings.

This process took about 15 minutes and was very easy. So if you were hit by Penguin due to spammy links, consider using the Link Disavow Tool ASAP.

I’ll be posting an update on this soon, so check back here and or subscribe to our updates.

There’s no such thing as bad publicity…

At least that’s what they used to say. The assumption is that as long as people are talking about you, even if they are announcing that your brand/product/service/new novel is utter trash, it will only build your fame and increase your success.

If you look at the latest high-profile Social Media PR-disaster, it seems like bad publicity can certainly be a good thing… so long the brand responds in a smart way.

Take the example of British Feminine Hygiene brand Bodyform’s handling of a Facebook comment that made it the laughing stock of the Web.

This superbly ironic comment went massively viral, making Bodyform’s carefully-crafted marketing messages surrounding carefree, energetic and supposedly menstruating women having a blast while wearing white capri pants, look totally stupid.

And let’s be honest – it’s freakin’ ridiculous!

And yes, you are reading correctly – this one post got more than 87,000 likes. Considering Bodyform’s page had less than 3,000 likes total before this comment, this kind of mass sneering at its expense threatened to hijack its branding completely. And all this PR havoc was generated by a guy called Richard Neill, an ordinary Facebook citizen with just 313 friends (and a wicked sense of humor).

Thankfully, Bodyform got smart and responded with a hilarious video, that is now going viral. The video is doing a great job of restoring its Bodyform’s dignity, while positioning it as a brand that is in-touch with the irreverent atmosphere of Facebook. As a result, Bodyform more than doubled it’s page likes, while gaining exposure for its brand from a wide audience.

Other companies have faced PR crisis on social media with less success: GoDaddy was seriously slammed after it’s founder posted a video of himself killing an elephant and lost clients as a result; KitchenAid didn’t make much of the scandal after an employee accidentally posted an insensitive tweet about President Omaba’s dead grandma from the company account – firing the employee didn’t make its brand more loveable; and Dominos Pizza did only a ho-hum job of responding a viral video of its employees tainting the food in one of its restaurants.

Bodyform, on the other hand, recognized that the the magic words in these situations is simply:

“Sorry, Richard. We’re sorry.”

Get a dignified blonde lady with an deadpan British sense of humor to say that for you, and you can’t go wrong .

If brands aim to make themselves more human, then it seems that its OK if they occasionally make mistakes, are inconsistent and are hypocritical. We’re all like that.

Most of us learned by high-school that a willingness to acknowledge your flaws, preferably with humor, wins us friends and helps us out of all sorts of embarrassing situations. Brands needs to apply the same social skills in order to navigate the stormy waters of online reputation in the Social era.

What do the product descriptions on your website have in common with venomous spiders?

Have you gotten bit by Google? Duplicate content could be to blame

Both are potentially fatal!

I’m sure you’re careful to watch for 8-legged critters when on the trail (or if you’re from spider-infested Australia like me, when you’re walking down the street). So too, you should pay close attention to the content on the product pages of your ecommerce site.

Because if you are not careful, this content can be lethal to your rankings.

In fact, publishing standard, default product descriptions is one of the most common and deadly mistakes that ecommerce sites are making today.

Why Product Descriptions are So Deadly

Many ecommerce stores which retail or drop-ship wholesale products receive datafeeds from their manufacturers or suppliers. These feeds make it oh-so-easy to populate your  store with hundreds of standard product titles, descriptions, images, etc.

Five years ago, using these datafeeds as-is was fine and dandy, and these product pages could even score you some search engine traffic. Over the past 2-3 years, as Google’s updates have put SEO competition into hyperdrive, SEO experts have increasingly discouraged using standard product descriptions.

Now, since Google’s Penguin update in April, using standard product descriptions has become a major SEO bloodsucker.

Yet so many ecommerce sites are still using standard product descriptions.

Why this Penguin Has Fangs

The main problem with the default product descriptions found in datafeeds is that many other sites are using them. In fact, your supplier and most of your competitors are using the exact same content on their product pages. In addition, countless shopping portals and marketplaces, starting at Amazon and NextTag and going right down to bottom of the spam barrel are using the same datafeeds and publishing the exact same content.

This creates a massive problem of “duplicate content” and Google circa 2012 feels the same way about duplicate content that you do about big hairy spiders.

Let’s get this clear: Google really, really does not like duplicate content.

It used to be that a bit of duplicate content just meant that that particular product page would not rank well in the search engines. Now, Google will penalize your rankings for your entire site if it determines that your site has a lot of duplicate content.

In other words, your entire SEO effort could collapse in a twitching heap if you don’t pay attention to the text on your product pages.

How to Take the Sting out of Duplicate Content

Fixing this problem is very simple: you need to create unique content for each of your product pages. Make sure that both the title and product description are original and created with the latest approach to on-page SEO in mind. The description should be at least 100 words long.

Sure, this is not as easy and fast as publishing the default content supplied in datafeeds, and if you have thousands of products this could be a big job. However a copywriter with reasonable skill can take care of it. Start with your top-selling products, and work through it slowly.

Have you been bitten by Google’s update over recent years?

Do you suspect that duplicate content has been part of your problem?

Looking at the New LinkedIn, I can almost hear the question echoing in their strategist’s heads: What can we do to be more like Facebook?

Though I’m a fan of LinkedIn as a tool for job hunting, business networking and lead generation, I’ve always felt that it was not the kind of place I would want to “hang out.” It’s the kind of place where you visit, you do what you have to do, and then you leave, without getting distracted by any shiny objects.

Did anyone ever kick themselves because they just inadvertently wasted hours on LinkedIn?

How very different from Facebook…

But now LinkedIn seems to have finally got the hang of this “Social Network” thing. Your LinkedIn homepage now consists mainly of a feed showing all the activities of your connections, allowing you to like, comment and share. It’s actually pretty interesting and fun to read.

Your profile page is now slimmed down and your photo enlarged, making it easier to find out what you want to know about a person. Company pages also just got a complete makeover and may actually become a useful marketing tool one of these days.

Like on Facebook, for example…

But do you know what’s my favorite thing about the new LinkedIn?

The New LinkedIn features notifications that make it seem more social

It’s the notifications.

In the new black bar that’s frozen at the top of your page, it shows a little red envelope when someone messages you or invites you to connect. Next to it is a little red flag that notifies you that someone has responded to your activity. Perhaps they’ll soon separate the connection requests from the messages.

Kind of like Facebook, ya know

But so important! Now when I come to LinkedIn, I immediately feel that this is a happening place, where people are responding to and sharing my updates and content.

Suddenly LinkedIn feels like a real social network.

It actually makes me want to visit more often, even without a specific reason.

Kind of like Facebook, I know ]]> http://www.newedgedesign.com/new-linkedin/feed/ 0 http://www.newedgedesign.com/businesses-dont-blog/ http://www.newedgedesign.com/businesses-dont-blog/#comments Wed, 12 Sep 2012 07:25:29 +0000 Naomi http://www.newedgedesign.com/?p=2830 Read More]]>

Got a Message for the World? So blog already!

Bloggers like me think we rule the world.

I’ll admit we have a tendency to look down on any person or business who doesn’t have a blog by now.

I mean, you want traffic, right? You want fame?  You want to do web marketing the right way?

So blog already!

That’s how I used to think anyway, before I entered the world of ecommerce. Then I started to learn why “write a blog” has remained stuck at the bottom of your marketing priorities list for so long.

Here are a 3 of the most common reasons I hear for why businesses don’t blog:

1. My website platform does not include blogging software
2. I don’t have the time to blog
3. No one will read my blog

Well, fasten your seat-belts, Ladies and Gentlemen. What I’m about to say may turn your thinking about blogging for business upside down, as I address each of these three challenges and show you why they are just no excuse!

1. My Website Platform doesn’t Have a Blog

This is a very common reason that businesses give for failing to blog and I hear it. Ecommerce platforms being what they are, they don’t always offer blogging software out of the box. You usually have to integrate your site with a blogging software, preferably WordPress. I’ve written posts about how to integrate Volusion with WordPress and BigCommerce with WordPress. It’s also possible to integrate a blog with Magento or whatever other platform you may be using.

When you add a blog this way, it will be hosted on a sub-domain, not your main domain. For example, your store will be located at igloos4less.com and your blog will be found at blog.igloos4less.com.

This makes the SEO pundits complain that there is no SEO value in having a blog because it is not located on a your main domain. Thanks guys, but you’re missing the point.

Ever noticed where ecommerce giant Zappos.com publishes its blog? That’s right: blogs.zappos.com.

You mean Zappos doesn’t know how to do SEO????

Besides SEO, there are so many benefits to blogging when it comes to building traffic, getting one-time visitors to return, garnering social media shares, and fostering audience engagement.

In fact, some businesses run blogs on entirely different domains, with no apparent connection to their main domain. We do this for our own business and it can be a great way to build an active following and real relationships in a way that is sometimes difficult on a corporate blog.

So just because your ecommerce platform doesn’t support blogging on your main domain, this is no excuse not to blog for your business.

2. I Don’t Have Time to Blog

Whenever someone says they don’t have time for a particular thing, it usually really means they don’t believe it’s a worthwhile activity or that they just plain dislike it.

Is blogging worthwhile for your business? Well, let me put it this way. Most businesses who actively blog get most of their site’s traffic through their blog (New Edge Design included). Moreover, blog traffic keeps on coming long-term, unlike traffic from Adwords, banners or other paid advertising that stops sending traffic that very same day that you get fed up with paying for it.

When you think about it that way, you may realize that you can find the time to blog.

And if you just don’t enjoy the tasks associated with blogging, a good content marketer will take on this task and take your blog to the top.

Next excuse?

3. No one will read my blog

Many business owners find it hard to understand why anyone would read their blog. They are too busy to follow many blogs and can’t imagine how others will find the time to read theirs. This is especially true if you are in an industry that is a little… ahem… uninteresting to the general public.

Perhaps you tried blogging at some point and saw that no one was reading, so you gave up?

It’s true that there are a few rules to learn about writing a successful blog: you have to know the basics of writing for search engines; how to pick topics that will attract readers; how to get other bloggers to help you promote your blog, etc.

If you are in B2B, or if your topic is a bit dry, then it can be especially hard to get a blog off the ground. But in my opinion it’s worth the extra investment.

There is definitely a learning curve and it’s possible that no one will read your first few posts, but things will pick up with time, if you do it right. I’m very relieved to say that no one ever read the first few blog posts I wrote. They weren’t that great .

There is plenty of free information available on how to grow a blog audience. Go forth and learn.

Or else just hire a content marketer to manage your blog and grow the readership for you. One of the things I love about working for New Edge Design is being part of the blogs that we manage for our clients.

People like me love writing blogs for people like you .

Will Blogging Work for Every Business?

Hey, I’m not selling a magic bullet here. There are probably some situations where a blog is not the best marketing route for a business. But in all honesty, blogging is one of the best techniques out there for driving traffic to your business and building your brand.

If I haven’t convinced you that your business needs a blog, write a comment below and tell me why.