A blog is an important part of any business’s online marketing toolkit. If your posts are frequent, interesting and well-written, they’ll help you build a relationship with your visitors and attract new traffic to your site. What’s not to like about that!

Lucky for you, every Spiffy Store comes with a blog section already installed and ready for action. All you need to do is start using it. This article will show you how to get cracking with confidence.

But, before you begin to write, you’ll need to do some prep…

Decide who’s going to help you – blogging takes up a big chunk of time. Rope in as many helpers as you can to help you research and write.

Know your audience – visualize your reader as a real person just like you or me; you’ll want to be talking to them when you write.

Mix up your content – blog posts generally fall into three categories:

• Useful content: educational and informative pieces like “how to” articles, news and advice that present you as a trustworthy business. Most of your blog posts will fall into this category.
• Entertaining content: funny videos & stories that build emotional connections with your readers by revealing your brand’s human qualities.
• Promotional/sales content: news about a new product, sales event or service should be kept to a minimum. Your blog is not a sales channel and you’ll lose return visitors if you spruik your wares too much here.

Gather ideas for your posts – finding something interesting to write about on a regular basis can be the most difficult bit. Believe me, I know! The following list should get your creative juices flowing:

• Relate to a topical or trending news item
• Write a post for each of your most frequent customer service question
• Write about an interesting fact or new data relating to your industr
• Share company news such as an award, or an important mileston
• Take readers on a look behind the scene
• Illustrate different uses for your product
• Write ‘best & worst’ posts – how, and how not, to do something
• Review a new product or service you’ve see
• Write a top 10 list
• Give away some tips

Create a content calendar – this is the best way to avoid getting distracted or overwhelmed. With your blog topics in mind, plan out a calendar for your blog posting and keep to it. I’d recommend scheduling at least one blog per week.

Still with me? OK, now you can start writing!

My ten tips for writing a good blog:

1. Be clear about your objectives when you begin. What do you want the post to do – inspire, promote or inform?
2. Optimise your blog for search with keywords in the title, content and tags
3. Create a strong, powerful headline to draw the reader in
4. Make the post lively, interesting and useful
5. Write like you’re talking to another person and call them “you”
6. Write in short paragraphs so it’s easier to read
7. Use sub headings to lead your readers through the content
8. Aim for around 500 words in length
9. Always add an image to support the theme
10. Try making a video or audio podcast sometimes instead of a written piece

Promote your post – don’t forget to announce your new post on your social media channels. It’s a great way to encourage web traffic, sharing and linking.

Rinse and repeat! Once you start blogging, keep it up. The more blog posts you publish, the more web pages search engines can display so your regular efforts will start to bring new, qualified traffic.

Finally, keep an eye on your website analytics for which posts get the most traffic, links and shares. Use these insights to help you create further popular posts.

Back in the days when Mum wore a pinny and Dad sported a hat to work, shopping wasn’t the soulless chore it is now. It was a social event.

A trip to Mr. Green’s store guaranteed Mum personal attention, new goodies to taste, meal tips and lashings of neighbourhood gossip. And as she left, the kindly shopkeeper would slip a lolly for little Timmy into her hand.

And so it went on, week after week. Mum enjoyed being looked after, and the extra value Mr. Green added to her task. In turn, Mr. Green learnt about his customers needs and earned their repeat business, so he was happy too.

But a lot has changed since then.

Today, that special connection has been lost. The buying experience has been reduced to a sterile transaction – I give you money, I take away the thing I want.

And sadly, we’ve become used to it. The buying public has low expectations that are frequently only just met. The incentive to buy has been reduced to a price war that has cut deeply into business profit margins.

It’s even worse in the world of the online shopper, who’s cut off from human contact completely. The personal touch and the chance to add value has been all but lost.

This is your chance to shine online

This sorry status quo presents a huge opportunity for smart online business owners like you. You can create a competitive advantage and increase sales by offering your customers a shopping experience that will knock their socks off.

The rewards of a better relationship with your customers include fewer complaints, increased business and precious referrals and recommendations. With the birth of social media, these recommendations can be carried to a very large audience at no cost to yourself.

Not sure where to begin? Here are my five secrets to creating an irresistible online store by impressing the pants off your customers.

1. Give your brand an enticing presence

Put everything from your website to your customer service emails under the microscope and look at them through your customers’ eyes.

Does your business leave a positive impression? Is your store welcoming and easy to browse? Are your product descriptions lively and your photos hi-quality? What about your phone voice mail message?

Every time your audience comes into contact with your brand, you have a chance to give them an unforgettable experience and build that important relationship. Check where you can tighten up.

2. Keep your customers informed

Communication is key to providing a great customer experience. By that I don’t mean spamming your database with promotions.

• Keep in contact with your customers throughout the order process. Email them a note when their order has been posted and let them know when it can be expected. Go that extra mile and follow up with a personal email to check their goodies have arrived and are being enjoyed.
• Make it easy for people to contact you when they need you. Display your contact details prominently on each page of your website and have a ‘contact us’ page.
• Answer the phone politely and cheerfully. Check that your voicemail message has the same welcoming tone.
• Use social media channels like Twitter, Facebook and Google+ to offer tips or entertain your audience.

3. Act quickly

The instant nature of the Internet has made us all impatient beasts. Hours can seem like days when you’re expecting a response or delivery, so act quickly to reduce complaints.

• Post out store orders within 24 hours. Don’t leave a customer waiting to receive goods they’ve already paid for.
• Answer any email enquiries or complaints the same day they arrive.
• Respond to a query or complaint within 4 hours on Twitter and within 24 hours on Facebook and other social networks like Google+. Any later, interest in your business will drop like a lead balloon.

4. Surprise and delight

Don’t leave that extra effort for when things go wrong. It’s the little unexpected things you do for your customers in the course of regular business that makes you stand out as a great business. Remember Mr. Green and his little treats!

• Add a handwritten note in the package.
• Offer free gift wrapping.
• Include a discount voucher for their next order.

5. Treat every complaint as an opportunity

Sometimes a customer complaint can be a blessing in disguise. If you can resolve it successfully, you may well keep the customer and even be referred to others.

• Whatever the cause, don’t make excuses for what happened, take ownership of the situation and let the customer know you care about resolving the issue quickly.
• If you’re hearing the same question often, consider making it into an FAQ or tutorial on your website.

If in doubt, phone a friend

Sometimes we’re so close to something, we can’t see the wood for the trees. If you’re stuck for ideas to improve the customer experience, ask a good friend to act as a buyer and offer you suggestions. You might be surprised at the things you learn.

A great product image is essential if you want to sell your goodies online. But we can’t all afford to have professional photos taken, and manufacturers’ photos can be a bit, well… dull, can’t they.

Take heart – you can DIY and create your own quality, hi resolution images! This is especially handy if you add to your collections continually.

Camera

This post is about taking decent photos with a decent smartphone. A real digital camera is better, but a good one costs a bit. You can use your smartphone camera with good effect if it’s over 8 megapixels.

Accessories

Smartphone SLR-style apps can give you greater flexibility so you can take better photos. However, don’t use a really creative photography app for product images. They’re great fun for blogs or editorial, but they won’t do you any favours when your web visitors are trying to decide whether or not to buy your goods.

Invest in a simple camera mount to avoid shaky images, and consider buying two good removable lenses (yes you can get them for smartphones!). A separate zoom lens will give you better-detailed product shots than a ‘digital’ (in camera) zoom, and a wide-angle lens is best when including backgrounds.

Photo background

Talking of backgrounds, you’ll need at least two types for your product photos – a sharp, high quality close up and a more creative and editorial version.

For a standard ‘studio’ product shot, use a solid, plain background, like large sheet of white paper. There’s good illustration of how to set this up in brokenarts’s blog.

For a more creative shot, place your product in context, like the kitchen or illustrating its uses, and shoot the whole thing.

Lighting

For natural lighting, choose a well-lit spot without direct sunlight. Turn off any room lights and use a mirror or white boards to reflect some daylight onto your product.

For a studio effect, make a backdrop of a plain piece of white paper as described above. Turn off the overhead lights and use regular lamps either side of the object to provide ‘spotlighting’. You will need to move them around to get the best lighting effect and avoid dark areas on the product or shadows on the paper.

Whatever lighting you use, make you capture the right colour of the product in your photos.

Image editing

We live in the heady days of cloud software, and free photo-editing tools are available to help you tweak your photos manually. The design industry standard is Photoshop, but it’s rather expensive. I use pixlr, but I’ll cover a few other free image optimisation tools in a future post.

Whatever software you choose, keep your editing simple and don’t alter the colour of your product. You also don’t need to re-size your images as Spiffy Stores automatically re-sizes them to fit in different areas of your store.

Have fun experimenting with photography on your smartphone!

Have you noticed more of your email offers and store updates are going unread lately? Are you not feeling the love? Take heart. It may not be your fault.

What happened?

Google loves to challenge the status quo, the cheeky rascal. Recently, it turned its attention to the humble email and the result has been a big change to the way emails are received in a Gmail inbox.

In an attempt to reduce inbox stress, Gmail now automatically categorises your incoming emails and moves them into new folders. The traditional inbox has been split into three tabbed sections to accommodate this – ‘Primary’, ‘Social’ and ‘Promotions’.

The Primary tab is always on display and is intended to collect email from close connections, like your friends and family. The Social tab will capture emails from social networking sites, such as updates and friend requests, and Promotions is where you will find commercial emails such as yours. And ours. Hmmm.

Why it’s an important change

Emails from your ecommerce site, like your newsletter or special offer, won’t land in the main inbox, but will be diverted to the Promotions tab where they can be easily missed. Or they could languish there for days if the user deems Promotions a less important tab.

The result? Your customers and subscribers may be blissfully unaware of your latest news or offer. Not great for generating interest in your 24 hr sale or a subscription confirmation.

What you can do now

1. Don’t panic. The latest intel from the big email companies shows that although it seems to be impacting open rates, the drop is fairly minimal.

2. If you use Gmail yourself, you need to ensure important emails like messages about your Spiffy Stores account are delivered straight to your Primary tab. To do this, check the other tabs regularly and drag any emails you’d prefer not to miss into the Primary tab. You will be asked if you always want emails from that sender in that tab. Just say yes.

3. Check your mailing and customer lists. How many of them are using a Gmail account? Send them an email asking them to do #2 above. It’ll go into their Promotions tab but hey, they’ll find it eventually.

4. Add a note to the thank you or confirmation pages on your website reminding the user to check their Promotions tab for any resulting emails if they use Gmail.

5. Make your emails even more unmissable. Pack them to the rafters with quality information or offers, spin a humdinger of a subject line and have your subscribers chomping at the bit to read them.

For more information about Gmail’s tabbed inbox, check out the low down from the big G here.

Jamie Oliver was on to something when he created nutritious meals that busy families could make in 30 minutes (although it always takes me a bit longer). It was a breakthrough in weeknight cooking and stores sold millions of his cookbooks to hungry, time-poor cooks worldwide.

When the public cried out for more, he went one step further. He created a collection of dishes that can be prepared in just 15 minutes, proving once and for all that lack of time was not an excuse for making a decent meal.

In homage to Mr O, I’d like to show you that you too can ‘feed’ your online store in a similarly short amount of time using social media.

My guide to promoting your store in just 15 minutes per day focuses on the main social networks I think online retailers should be using. Ideally, you’ll jump in and check your streams more than once a day, but this is a good framework to make sure you share a morsel every day.

First, set up tools for speed and efficiency

Just as the time-saving blender and food processor are key to Jamie’s meals, so you will need tools to help streamline your activities.

Bring all your social media accounts together in one management tool to make them easier to control. I use the ever-popular Hootsuite.

Next, gather your ingredients

Don’t be stuck for something to say – have content coming to you daily in a steady stream. Set up Google Alerts and Social Mention alerts to get regular emails of newly published content containing your keywords.

I also use Feedly to collate new daily content from my favourite blogs and websites, and Evernote to tag and save anything cool I find on the web for later use.

It’s worth mentioning Instagram photo app at this point too. This is a quick way to create attractive photos you can use on your website or post on the social media channels below.

Now, set the timer for 15 minutes and let’s go!

• Twitter – respond to any direct queries, flick through your stream and retweet something of interest, tweet something of your own and follow a couple of new people. Check if you can use any trending hashtags in your tweets.
• Facebook business page – respond to any new comments, like any good content that’s been posted, and share a new post.
• Pinterest – respond to any comments on your pins, repin a cool image, and add a couple of new pics yourself.
• Google+ – check your feed for good content to +1 and post one piece of new content. Follow one new account.

OK, I admit you may not get through all that in 15 minutes, especially at first, but following this short daily routine will help you keep your social conversations under control and build your store’s online following.