Blogging 101 for Camping Gear Sellers

Camping In The MountainsMore people are turning to camping.

If you love camping, you already know the many joys of being outdoors.

For those that are new to the activity, they’re about to have some wonderful experiences. Well, perhaps a few of those will be challenging, but nearly everybody that does it learns to love it at least a little.

Camping doesn’t need to be a large expense. But there is a lot of helpful gear available. For those selling the gear, it’s a big opportunity coming down the line. Millennials are entering their prime earning years. They have families and they’ll want to do things with those families.

It’s a good time to be in the camping business. But there will be competition. One way to stand out is with a blog.

If you’re interested in blogging for your camping business, here are a few basics…

1. Target Audience

The first thing to know about blogging is to know your target audience. For one, you want to address the questions those people are asking and make them aware that your brand exists. For two, knowing the target reader will help you create the content. It helps provide focus so the content is helpful.

If you’ve been in business awhile you probably have a good idea of your best customers. Create profiles for them. Learn as much as you can about them. You can bet there are more just like them out there interested in content and what you’re selling.

Also look to the trends in new campers. I mentioned families. That could be one trend that will continue to grow. But you’ll have to look at the new customers coming in and create profiles for them as well.

2. Educate & Entertain

With blogging content you’re looking to educate and entertain. If your content is really good it will do both. Some of the best content creators have taken this basic focus and used it to attract large audiences. Try to make your blog content fit into one of these two categories.

3. Q&A

Start by identifying as many questions as you can. Questions that your target audience is asking. You can start with the sales and support team. Talk to them about what your customers are asking. This can be a goldmine of ideas for blog posts. If someone is asking something of you and your team you can bet there are many more out there thinking the same question. And probably searching for it on Google and social media. Your content can be the source of information that helps them…and makes them aware of your business.

You can also mine for questions on social media and also on forums. There are lots of camping forums where people are asking questions. Identify the ones that you can provide a great answer for and add those to your blogging schedule.

4. Frequency

I suggest doing a daily blog post. That may seem like a lot, but if you’re starting from scratch I think it’s the best thing to do. You’re committing to 300+ posts per year. That’s a lot of content. It gives you a lot of data to look back and analyze.

Most importantly, I think this frequency goal tests you to see if you’re up for the blogging effort. If you make it a year then you’re in really good shape and you’ll probably continue. And with 300+ posts you’re going to see some interest from people. Both from search engines and on social media where you share the posts.

You don’t necessarily need to stick with that frequency after the first year, but it’s a good way to start.

5. Analytics

Install analytics on your blog from Day 1. But don’t spend too much time looking at it. Unless you have a large audience already on your site, there won’t be much interest in the blog at first. Focus on hitting your goals for frequency. Learn how to write a post. Do that for at least 6 months and even a year.

Then go back and start looking at the analytics. See what posts are getting the most traffic and see where that traffic is coming from. You can use this information and more to help determine the topics you’ll cover in Year 2.

Conclusion

There is an opportunity for camping sellers to step above the competition with blogging. It’s not the easiest marketing effort, but that’s why it offers an opportunity. Most won’t be willing to do it. But that doesn’t mean your audience still won’t have questions.

If you’re willing to get into blogging, it will be worth it. And hopefully these tips will help you along the way.

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