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Many online businesses have seen and reaped the rewards of blogging. Your blog could easily draw new visitors and keep them coming back only if you know the secrets to successful blogging. Some bloggers make mistake without being aware and it hinders them from attaining their goals. Take a look at the do’s and don’ts to successful blogging and maximize the potential of your blog.

DON’T: Make your blog your press center. Blogs should always carry a conversational tone, it serves as a tool or a medium for you to connect with potential customers on a more personal level.

DO: To make people become an avid visitor of you blog, come up with interesting articles. Make sure that is related to your industry and include your personal experiences and personal insights.

DON’T: Take too long to update your blog. Today’s most successful blogs update content twice a week at the very least. But don’t just copy articles from other sites or plagiarize.

DO: Set a schedule for when will you update your blog and if possible stick with that schedule. Plan your topics ahead of time so you would not suddenly find yourself staring at the blank screen when it’s time to do updates. You can also enlist other people to write for your blog.

DON’T: Disable commenting. You may be doing these because you are afraid to be criticized but know that having comments on your site is good way to interact with your customers. It is always a good way to engage your customers in a conversation. Negative feedback helps you improve and learn, so you don’t have to be afraid.

DO: If you are doing a business blog, link its URL to your corporate site. Include the blog address in your email signatures, business cards, profile pages, status messages, and sales collateral’s. Enable users to subscribe to your blog through RSS feeds.

DON’T: Give up easily. Remember that the success of blogging doesn’t happen overnight. For the first few months, you may feel like you don’t have an audience or a reader at all. This is the reason why many bloggers give up too soon. Don’t expect to see returns immediately after the launch of your blog.

DO: Be consistent and work hard. Keep in mind the tips provided in this article then give it at least a year of updating regularly and publishing quality content.

Following and remembering Do’s and Dont’s is difficult but if you are able to follow them strictly then you will see great success with your blogs.

An ecommerce website, boiled down to its dry essence, is a virtual salesman at best and a slow-to-deliver electronic vending machine at worst. Consciously or not, online stores are conceived, designed, and created to sell products while making as little personal contact with a customer as possible. And as such, well-written product descriptions can have a significant impact on a store’s success.

Put Yourself in the Customer’s Shoes

It’s a useful exercise to try to view your listings as your potential customer. In marketing, we do audience analysis to understand the needs, wants, and fears of those who might want to purchase our product. Before you create your listing, ask yourself these questions such as who might want to buy my product? Why do they want to buy it?
Know Your Audience, and Imagine Who is Speaking and Who is Listening

Before publishing everything into page, know to whom you are writing for. You should know the audience, and imagine who is speaking and who is listening. Imagine your best customers when you write and acknowledge that you will be speaking to multiple audiences at once.

Get Your Customer’s Attention

If a reader is not paying attention, even the most facile and persuasive writing becomes a blunt speech. Good product descriptions must quickly capture a shopper’s attention. It is best that you are able to grab attention very quickly. You can achieve this if you are willing to use strong words and questions. If you do, you are likely to achieve results in the end. Examples of attention-grabbing phrases are the following:

  • “A Peppermint flavored lollipop, which contains real farm raised ants!” From Edible.com, this opening gets my attention without straying far from the product.
  • “Walk into a room and make an impression.” From Pierotucci.
  • “Meet Darth Talon, Sith Vixen.” Got noticed at Entertainment Earth.

Communicate, Persuade, Tell a Story

Once you have the shopper’s attention, communicate with them. Tell them a product story that first appeals to their emotions — human nature— and second, if need, offers logical support for the warm buying feelings they are experiencing.

“Copy cannot create desire for a product. It can only take hopes, dreams, fears, and desires that already exist in the hearts of millions of people, and focus those already-existing desires onto a particular product. This is the copywriter’s task: not to create this mass desire — but to channel and direct it,” explained Eugene Schwartz, author of the book Breakthrough Advertising.

When you tap into universal desires, try to:

Tell a story;
Use extremely specific examples;
Appeal to emotions first;
Use engaging, descriptive language.

Know your audience, get its attention, and communicate. Those are the keys to writing product descriptions that sell, in my view. We’ve focused on written words, but, of course, images, sounds, and video can also serve as compelling product descriptions.