Do you feel like you’re writing website content with little impact? That people are reading but not connecting? For many ecommerce writers, there’s a gap between the ability to communicate and the ability to relate to clients in a meaningful way. Blogs should communicate expertise, but not in a highly technical way. Your tone needs to match your audience.
The Knowledge Balance
The first step to creating meaningful content is building a deep base of product knowledge. Writers, like sales staff, who know a lot about products communicate a greater degree of enthusiasm, answer questions more effectively, and have more confidence when interacting with clients. And while the client may not be in the room with you when you’re writing that blog post, all of those benefits will come across in your blog posts.
Play On Emotion
Expressing expertise is a key part of creating great blog content, but emotions play a role too. In fact, emotions are a big part of why influencers are so effective at promoting products. Sure, influencers have reach and a knowledge of content creation, but the good ones only take on products they really believe in, and their content conveys that. As an ecommerce blogger, you have to offer a bit of your own emotional insight.
What if you sell a product that doesn’t necessarily inspire emotion? There are still ways to express enthusiasm. The post exploring the history of the egg chair provides a depth of knowledge about the product, but it also offers a personal level of connection to each model in the “Why We Love It” segments. Each of those sections says something about the design aspects as well as how it “feels” in use. This information is at least as useful to potential buyers as product specs, but you have to know the product intimately if you’re going to speak to that element and not every blogger can do that.
Balance Your Voice
Think about your favorite author. What makes you connect with them? Everyone has different favorite authors, so why not play to those different sub-groups by embracing different perspectives on your blog? Recruit from different departments to write guest posts or feature the occasional post from a client.
Another way to balance out your blog content is by giving over control to writers who know a little bit less about your product. While your technical expertise is valuable, as noted above, generalists have the ability to pick up the key points and situate your product within the big picture of a field. Many writers who would be considered generalists are also pros at appealing to wide audiences. That’s the nature of the job.
Keep It Brief
Last of all, if your content doesn’t seem to connect, maybe you’re pushing too hard. Not in the sense that you’re forcing a sale, but rather in the sense of offering too much information. Keeping your blog content brief, whether in writing or through onsite videos, can help capture your audience without wearing them down. This is what makes Genius Kitchen so successful – the information is all there, it serves a need, but the videos are scaled to different lengths to suit different viewers.
There are countless ways to be informative when developing site content, but that isn’t enough. Rather, it’s more important to temper knowledge with a sense of connection. The true expert is one who can speak to many readers, not just fellow experts. It’s a rare skill in the world of ecommerce, but one worth cultivating.