Let’s be real, starting an online boutique can be great, but nothing’s worse than launching your boutique and getting zero sales. And for many new boutique owners the biggest fear is hearing crickets in our bank account on opening day.

Since starting my first boutique (both online and brick and mortar), I have tried just about everything to generate sales. I’ve done radio ads, FB and Instagram ads, magazine ads, etc. You name it, I’ve probably tried it!

Using blog posts to generate online boutique sales is one of the best (and one of my favorite) ways to get traffic and long-term sales. You put the work in up front and it’s there forever to generate traffic to your online boutique and turn those readers into customers.

Writing blog posts related to your online boutique is also one of the most cost-effective marketing tools to use. To add a blog to your already existing online boutique, all you have to do is add a link in the navigation menu to the page where your blog will live.

With carefully written and thought out blog posts, you’ll be raking in the sales before you know it!

Here are 4 steps to creating awesome blog content that will generate traffic and turn your readers into customers.

1) Planning out your blog posts

You’ll want to spend some time planning out your blog posts. A big mistake would be to just throw up a bunch of words onto the screen and hope someone reads it.

The key is to create blog posts your customers actually want to read and keep them coming back for more.

Here are some tips to planning and creating a successful online boutique blog post.

1a) Choose your keyword and what your post will about.

Let’s say you have an organic baby clothing online boutique.

You can find a lot of keyword and blog post ideas from Pinterest. So, next search “organic baby clothing” on Pinterest and see what other words come up.

So, from these other keywords at the top, I can see what is most popular on Pinterest and what other people are searching for related to organic baby clothing. So, I might come up with a blog post titled “The Top 5 Trending Organic Baby Clothing Brands” or “10 Must Have Organic Baby Boy Outfits this Winter”.

Really, the ideas and inspiration is sometimes endless on Pinterest!

1b) Write list posts.

Everyone loves a good list post. List blog posts tend to do better than non-list posts. Some ideas for list posts are…

How to …

# Ideas to …

# Ways to …

(I also used list post ideas in my above examples. Here they are again – “The Top 5 Trending Organic Baby Clothing Brands” or “10 Must Have Organic Baby Boy Outfits this Winter”.)

1c) Batch your blog post writing days and schedule out in advance.

Blog posts always sound like a great idea until you sit down to write and end up with writer’s block! I can’t say how many times this has happened to me.

That’s why now I like to batch my days. For example, I’ll set aside an entire day just to write blog posts for the entire month. That way, my brain doesn’t have to switch between tasks and I can get my online boutique blog posts done much faster.

Then, I’ll schedule everything to be posted automatically throughout the month and I’m done! I can’t recommend enough working this way (and for just about anything business related!)

2) SEO

Now that you have some post ideas, you need people to find them and read them. That’s where SEO (search engine optimization) comes in.

I know SEO can sound intimidating to some without a background internet marketing, but really you just need to know a few basics to get your articles and posts in the best position to be seen.

2a) Choosing keywords

There are many places to do keyword research, including Google itself.

I recommend using Google Keyword Planner which is a free tool you can use to come up with keywords.

I suggest using keywords that have medium to low level of competition. If the competition is too high, you probably won’t get seen on Google searches.

I would also use longtail keywords, meaning keywords that are 2+ words in length. Being more specific with your keywords will help you rank higher in search engines.

2b) After the keywords for your post is clear, you’ll want to make sure they are in a few places on your post.

Add your chosen keywords to:

1. Post title
2. Post URL (separate each keyword with a hyphen)
3. At least 4 times within the content of your post.
4. Image file names
5. Meta Description
6. Create a Pinterest friendly image (size 800 x 1200 pixels)
7. Add Inbound and Outbound Links

2c) Post Length

On average your blog posts length should be about 1000 + words, 1500-2000 words is even better.

2d) Headings and Subheadings

Breaking your post up with headings and subheadings helps your reader to follow along and also makes obvious the points you are trying to make.

3) Readability

Readability is the “quality of being easy or enjoyable to read”. It’s important to write in a way that your readers can understand and enjoy reading your posts or else the obvious happens and they won’t keep reading!

Here are a few ways to make your posts easy and enjoyable to read:

– Add important phrases in bold.
-Use italics for words and phrases you want to emphasize.
-Use no more than 5 lines per paragraph.

4) Create a customer email list.

I mention creating a customer email list here because it is SO important to your business. Your email list will always be that – YOURS. You own it.

You don’t own Facebook or Instagram and if your followers disappeared tomorrow because that’s what Facebook decided to do, you would have no say in the matter and there go all of your customers!

On your online boutique website, you’ll want a few places where people can sign up with their email. Offering a discount for signing up is one of the best ways to do this.

You will also need to choose an email provider. I personally use Aweber, but there are many others you can use as well.

Here is my post on “How to Create an Email List for Your Boutique”.

Have you started writing blog posts for your online boutique? What are some of your favorite topics?