Unique Blog Ideas for Sustainable Ecommerce Brands

How Can You Consistently Generate Leads for Your Sustainable Ecommerce Brand?

When mission-driven startups pursue digital marketing, they often rely solely on social media strategies to acquire and engage their target customers.

Social Sector Network recommends that ecommerce startup teams make blogging a marketing priority.

By consisting creating blog posts on their ecommerce websites, mission-driven startups effectively increase brand credibility, generate search engine traffic, and acquire new customers organically.

If you sell products or services online, blogging will provide the following benefits to your social enterprise:

• Website traffic from search engines and social media
• Ecommerce sales and lead generation opportunities
• Communication capabilities to improve brand recognition and market differentiation
• Impact and influence to further your mission through improved audience engagement

This post will teach you how to design a unique blog to grow your sustainable ecommerce brand. We will provide content ideas for your social enterprise blog and teach you about the best tools for building blog posts that rank in Google.

10 Unique Blog Ideas for Sustainable Ecommerce Brands

1. Explain Your Target Sustainability Issue

Sustainable ecommerce brands use online product and service sales to address social, environmental, and/or cultural issues. If you manage a sustainable brand, you are most-likely addressing an issue that is included within the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

Since your social/environmental mission is at the core of your brand, you will want to educate your audience on the issue(s) that your brand addresses. Provide insightful information, including facts and figures, on the specific problem that your social enterprise is working to solve. Convey the importance of your target sustainability issue(s) to your audience, and appeal to potential customers who value your mission.

2. Describe Your Sustainability Solution

In addition to educating your audience about your target sustainability issue, you need to illustrate the story of your sustainability solution. Use your blog to provide concrete evidence of the impact that your social enterprise creates.

Customers will want to know how their purchases contribute to your sustainability solution. When you describe your solution, it is important to specify the impact of each purchase or dollar the customer spends. Here are some examples of how to tie customers’ purchases to sustainability solutions:

• “25% of your clothing purchase funds youth startup ventures.”
• “Our solar lamps emit 90% less CO2 than traditional lighting fixtures.”
• “Every time you buy a computer from us, we donate a laptop to schools in rural communities.”

3. Provide Style, Health, and Wellness Tips

Depending what types of products you sell, you may want to create content that helps your audience achieve the goals they seek to accomplish when they purchase your products. Clothing and jewelry companies should ideally blog regularly about sustainable style. Following the same logic, social enterprises that provide health products, facilitate athletic events, or offer personal training should blog about health & wellness.

Providing free advice will establish your social enterprise as an expert in your sector and drive traffic from search engines, as well as social media platforms. You will want to ensure that advice posts cover topics that people commonly search for online.

Here are some simple steps and low-cost tools to identify topics that will resonate with your target audience:

1. First, use Keywords Everywhere, a low-cost extension for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, to identify relevant keywords to focus on in your blog post. Once you turn the extension on and buy credits (these are very inexpensive and completely worth the cost), search statistics will appear whenever you enter a term in Google. Additionally, the plugin provides downloadable lists of related keywords, which will appear on the right-hand side of your Google page.
2. Use Answer The Public to identify questions that people are asking on the internet. This will help you design valuable content that answers common questions related to your target keywords. All you have to do is enter target keywords, and the website will provide you with different types of questions internet users are asking about the subject.
3. Download our Blog Formatting Guide & Checklist below for more information on how to best use Keywords Everywhere, Answer the Public, and proven blogging techniques so you can create highly effective content.

4. Showcase Your Supply Chain

Do you sell environmentally friendly products? Create jobs in low-income communities? Provide economic opportunities for artisans? If your supply chain generates positive social/environmental impacts, you will want to share the story of where your products come from.

Use images and anecdotes to vividly describe the creation of your products. Provide a window into the lives of individual employees/artisans who work hard to bring your products to market. Showcase the benefits that your social enterprise has made in workers’ lives and describe the impact your supply chains have on the environment.

5. Highlight Your Product Features

Your blog provides a superb opportunity to differentiate the products/services you offer from competitor’s offerings. The best way to showcase your products through blog posts is to highlight key product features.

Create long-form posts describing the qualities and features that make your offerings unique. Use lists (bullets/numbers), customer testimonials, and comparison charts to demonstrate why your products are superior. Additionally, be sure to use high-quality images, ideally of people using your products.

Finally, don’t forget to add highly-visible product links in your post so readers can take immediate action to purchase the products and services you showcase. Hint: you can also use analytics and behavior tracking software to test the effects of different link placements on click rates.

6. Create Gift Guides

Gift guides are a fun way to generate sales and brand exposure. As you learn about your target audience (e.g. location, gender, interests), you can create gift guides leading up to the holidays they celebrate.

How to Design and Promote a Holiday Gift Guide:

1. Start preparing your guide at least two months before your target holiday, and plan to release the guide roughly one month before the holiday.
2. Clearly define your target customer (people who will buy your product) and their ideal gift recipients (e.g. friends, family, significant others, colleagues, children).
3. Select the products you will feature in your gift guide (pay close attention to price points).
4. Reach out to other sustainable ecommerce brands offering complementary products and see if they would like to collaborate on the guide. Hint: Use affiliate marketing software to track whether or not you generate sales for your collaborators, and see if they are willing to give you commissions on sales.
5. Design a creative guide that helps your target customers choose the best gifts for their recipients. People want to give memorable gifts that will make recipients feel appreciation and love for them, so keep this in mind.
6. Publish your gift guide one month before the holiday, and promote it with your collaborators using social media, mailing lists, and company websites.
7. Continue promotions until the holiday. Hint: Consider experimenting with increasing discount levels leading up to the holiday.
8. Ship your products with holiday packaging that clearly and concisely communicates your brand’s value proposition and social/environmental mission. Hint: You may want to include small bonus gifts and discount cards (featuring website links) to convert gift recipients into returning customers.

7. Answer Customer Questions

As you grow your customer base, you will begin to notice patterns in the questions that customers ask about your products/services, social enterprise, and sales policies (e.g. returns, shipping, support). To decrease help desk queries and build customer trust, consider creating a post that answers frequently asked questions (FAQs) about your products and services.

Make sure that you strategically link this post throughout your website, especially on sales pages and landing pages. You will also want to update your FAQ post overtime as you identify additional questions that customers commonly ask.

Here are a few channels you can use to identify common questions that influence customer purchasing decisions:

• Help Desk (e.g. communications via phone calls, contact forms, and chat services where customers speak with your support team) Hint: Consider adding pop-ups to your website that allow customers to chat with support representatives. Most ecommerce platforms have integrations that connect to Facebook messenger. You may want to also use ChatBots to automate elements of these conversations.
• Social Media Surveys (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram polls)
• Email Lists (Most newsletter services enable you to send polls to current subscribers)

8. Share Customer Stories

Social Proof is a core concept in social psychology that intelligent marketers leverage to drive sales and brand authority. Essentially, social proof means that people are more likely to engage in behaviors when they see other people engaging in the same behaviors. There are a variety of ways that you can use social proof to drive ecommerce sales.

How to Use Social Proof in Ecommerce Marketing:

• Recruit influencers (e.g. people your target customers follow and respect) to promote your brand and products.
• Create a network of brand ambassadors to promote your products on social media.
• Add customer testimonials to your website.
• Use shares and shoutouts to reward your customers for mentioning your brand and products on social media.
• List your number of customers on your website (e.g. “We delighted 2,000+ people with our products in 2020”).
• Create incentives for existing customers to refer friends to you.

The best way to incorporate social proof into your blog is to share customer stories. You can do this by reaching out to specific customers who champion your brand or sending out a newsletter to existing customers and asking them for stories. Ideally, you want to frame it as a way for customers to boost their own followings, and it may be worth offering future discounts or free products to participants.

Customer stories should showcase the value that your products and services provided in your customers’ lives. Each story should explain a specific problem a customer faced, describe how they searched for solutions, and explain why they ultimately purchased your product. Finally, the post must clearly demonstrate how purchasing your product resolved a customer’s problem once and for all, ideally showcasing how your solution improved that customer’s life.

As you work with customers to present their stories, make sure to design posts that feel natural and relatable. Try not to oversell your product, and attempt to choose influential customers who are representative of your target audience.

9. Promote Your Partner Organizations

In addition to building relationships with customers, blogging can help strengthen ties to your social enterprise’s partner organizations (e.g. service providers, vendors, brands). As you build your readership, consider reaching out to mission-aligned organizations that would benefit from exposure to your audience, and offer them opportunities to be featured on your blog. Promoting other organizations will help you strengthen ties within the social enterprise community and ideally create opportunities for future strategic collaborations.

How to Promote Partner Organizations Using Your Blog:

1. Gather metrics on your audience (e.g. page views, demographics, interests)
2. Identify 5-10 organizations that would benefit from exposure to your audience. It is also important that your audience will want to learn about and engage with the organizations.
3. Reach out to the organizations with an offer to appear on your blog. You will need to demonstrate how the opportunity will benefit the organizations by describing your audience with clear data and detailing your promotional strategy. Hint: If partner organizations may acquire new customers through the post, consider charging them for “sponsored content” or using affiliate links to arrange for commissions on leads you generate.
4. Work with partner organizations to design posts that will effectively showcase their organizations, engage your audience, and align with your social enterprise’s mission.
5. Promote the posts through your partner organization’s marketing channels, as well as your own. This will enable you to cross-promote each others brands.

10. Express Your Company Values

As you develop your brand, you will want to choose a set of core company values that resonate with your team and target customers. Ensure that these values embody your social enterprise’s mission and contribute to the social and environmental impact goals you have established.

Since you are cultivating a sustainable ecommerce brand, you must consistently work to promote your social enterprise’s mission and clearly communicate your company values. For mission-driven brands, blogging creates golden opportunities to convey company values in ways that resonate with target audiences. Use well-crafted blog posts to articulate your company values and provide concrete examples of how your team embodies them. Hint: Remember that customers prefer authentic, mission-driven brands, so find ways to convey your values and mission without sounding too self-promotional.

Best Blogging Tools

Now that you know how to generate unique blog ideas for your sustainable ecommerce brand, please take a moment to learn about the best online tools for building a successful blog.

Bluehost – Manage a Sustainable Ecommerce Website

• Core Function: Bluehost provides website hosting services. (All websites require hosting to appear on the internet)
• Competitive Advantage: Bluehost is probably the most reputable company in the website hosting industry. They provide superb customer support and give customers peace of mind (excellent cybersecurity protection, website back-up features, and protections against outages). Additionally, their hosting service makes it easy to create websites using WordPress (ideal for blogging and ecommerce) or Weebly (ideal for inexperienced website creators). Customers can also use the platform to purchase domains (comapanyname.com) or transfer existing domains from other hosting companies, such as Wix and Godaddy.
• Price Range: Bluehost pricing is similar to most hosting providers. Usually, hosting plans start at around $3.95/month for one website and come with free features, such as domains and SSL certificates. (You can use the platform to create free WordPress sites with custom domains, rather than paying additional fees to build/host websites using Shopify or Wix.)

Canva Pro – Create Blog Images & Social Media Graphics

• Core Function: Canva Pro is a cloud-based software solution that simplifies graphic design so anyone can create professional-level graphics, logos, presentations, and animations. Rather than spending years learning Adobe or hiring expert designers, social entrepreneurs can use Canva Pro to inexpensively manage their startup’s digital marketing initiatives.
• Competitive Advantage:Canva Pro design software provides training, tools, and templates that empower inexperienced designers to create expert-quality graphics. Plus, the software stores all of your designs in the cloud, so you can access your projects from anywhere using Canva’s website and mobile app. Canva Pro subscriptions include special features to enhance your marketing and design strategies:
  • Consistent Branding: Set default fonts and colors to use in all your designs
  • Professional Imagery: Unlock over 2 million high-quality images exclusively for subscribers
  • Resize Designs: One-click resize helps you share designs across social media platforms
  • GIF/Video Animation: Unlock special features to create animated designs
  • Quality Downloads: Create designs in professional formats (PDFs, transparent backgrounds, GIFs, etc.)
• Price Range: Canva Pro offers a Free 30-day trial so you can test their comprehensive design software. If you decide to purchase a subscription, you can get a year-long plan for $9.95/month or pay $12.95/month for monthly access. Since Canva Pro enables anyone to create professional-level designs, we highly recommend subscribing to their platform if you want to develop a credible and consistent looking brand. This software will power all of your digital marketing efforts (website design, social media marketing, product imagery, logo creation), so we believe the results you will achieve make Canva Pro a highly lucrative investment.

Squirrly SEO – Optimize Blog Posts

• Core Function: Squirrly SEO is a WordPress plugin that helps website managers implement search engine optimization (SEO) strategies so blog posts and key pages rank well in Google searches. Additionally, the plugin provides features to customize meta descriptions (text in search engine results) and social media graphics (images that appear on post shares).
• Competitive Advantage: This user-friendly plugin offers a variety of features, such as a keyword guidance dashboard and a social sharing customizer, which automatically appear in the WordPress page editor once you install the Squirrly SEO plugin. Additionally, the quick installation process helps you integrate your website with Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel. The plugin also offers keyword research, SEO audits, and sitemap automation features.
• Price Range: Squirrly SEO offers a free plugin that can be used on one WordPress website. Their paid plans are ideal for people who manage multiple websites and start at $29.99/month for 7 websites and include a variety of specialized SEO services.

Answer The Public – Discover Unique Blog Ideas

• Core Function: Answer The Public is a website that lets you enter topics (i.e. search terms), and based on your chosen topics, the website generates detailed lists of related questions that people ask on the internet. This tool is ideal for identifying content ideas, based on specific topics, that readers will find valuable.
• Competitive Advantage: Answer The Public is a fairly unique keyword research tool because it maps out the most-common questions internet users ask about specific topics. By highlighting prevalent questions, this website enables you to design blog posts that offer answers to the questions your audience members are most-likely to consider, especially if they find your posts through search engines. Additionally, blog posts that supply effective answers to readers search engine queries typically perform well in Google search results. (Google algorithms use many factors and data points to determine the order of search results. User behaviors, such as clicking on your website link in Google and not returning to the search results, can often indicate that your content effectively resolves user questions. In addition to content quality, Google algorithms evaluate backlinks, site speed, mobile optimization, and numerous other factors to determine search rankings.)
• Price Range: You can use Answer The Public for free, but your number of daily searches is limited. If you want to supercharge your blog research, you can purchase plans starting at $99/month. Paid plans enable you to conduct unlimited searches, collaborate with team members, create search listening alerts, conduct data comparisons, and download CSVs for analysis.

Keywords Everywhere – Perform Keyword Research

• Core Function: Keywords Everywhere is a user-friendly extension for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox that you can use to identify relevant keywords for blog posts. Once you turn the extension on and buy credits (these are very inexpensive and completely worth the cost), search statistics will appear whenever you enter keywords in Google.
• Competitive Advantage: This extension provides data on search volume, cost per click (CPC), competition, and historical performance for any keyword you enter in Google. Additionally, the extension generates a downloadable list of data on related keywords, which appears on the right-hand side of the Google page. For a highly affordable price, Keywords Everywhere offers a user-friendly method to evaluate search terms and select target keywords to help you rank your blog posts in Google, as well as develop effective search engine advertisements.
• Price Range: Once you download the Keywords Everywhere extension for Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox, you must purchase credits to view search data. For as little as $10, you can collect information on 100,000 keywords. This low-priced keyword research tool offers an amazing return-on-investment!

MozBar – Evaluate Competitor Websites

• Core Function: MozBar is a Google Chrome extension that provides SEO data on websites you visit or view in Google searches. This extension offers a user-friendly solution to the challenging tasks of analyzing competitor websites and identifying potential marketing partners.
• Competitive Advantage: Similar to Keywords Everywhere, MozBar automatically supplies data in your browser once you download and install the Google Chrome extension. The extension supplies scores for Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA) whenever you visit a website or see a Google search result. MozBar also offers instant information on the number of backlinks (external website links pointing to a specific page) for each website you visit or find in search results. If you want to learn more about a particular website, you can click the “link analysis” button beneath search results to access Moz’s comprehensive analysis of that website’s authority scores and backlink characteristics. Hint: Pages with high page/domain authority scores and large numbers of reputable backlinks are more-likely to rank high in Google search results. You should design posts on topics where your competition has low authority scores, and you should attempt to get backlinks from websites with high authority scores to boost your search rankings.
• Price Range: MozBar is a free Google Chrome extension. However, you can purchase a Moz Pro plan for $99/month to access the full software suite of SEO research and reporting tools. Moz Pro provides tools to help you understand your visitors, track search rankings, audit your websites, optimize your pages, and identify backlink opportunities. Additionally plan subscribers get additional MozBar features to evaluate keyword difficulty, assess page optimization, and analyze SERP data.

Implement Unique Blog Ideas for Your Sustainable Ecommerce Brand

Are you ready to apply proven strategies and expert marketing tools to build a high-traffic blog that generates ecommerce leads?

Download our essential blogging guide to discover a step-by-step process that you can use repeatedly to create high-performing blog posts.

Build a Blog that Propels Your Sustainable Ecommerce Brand!

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