058: How a Blog Can Help My Subscription Box Business

Does content creation just feel like a never-ending burden? Write the emails, show up live, create the post, do the short videos, on and on and on and on. But what if it all stemmed from only one piece of content that could be used in multiple ways? I've got a great episode for you today. Come listen.

Welcome to the Launch Your Box podcast with weekly tips, tricks, and strategies to start, launch and grow your subscription box. Now here's your host, Sarah Williams.

Welcome back to the Launch Your Box podcast. I've got a good one for you today. I've got a juicy one that is very actionable. And so you might, if you're sitting at your desk, just pull out your notebook because you might want to take some notes today. I'm excited about this one because it's something that I've done for a very long time. We've seen a lot of results from it, and I want to share it with you today. Last week inside Scale Your Box, If you don't know what Scale Your Box is, it's this membership that I started last year for people that were past the launching stage and really looking to scale their businesses. We are now turning that into a course, which is going to launch March 24th. Write that down too. But this was an event that we were having inside Scale Your Box. And I invited my copywriter to come in and talk about copy and content because sometimes It's the heaviness of our business, especially if we're creatives. We really like the creative visual pieces and not necessarily the creative written pieces. We started talking about emails and how to nurture our audience and when to send and what to send. And then we got on the topic of really creating this hero piece of content. And that is the blog. And you could just see when we started the conversation about blogging, I got the eye rolls. I got the comments of, oh, it's one more thing we have to do. Just, yeah. Yada, yada, like, oh, what, what is she telling us to do now? But here's the thing. When we started to walk through what this could look like for their subscription box businesses, and I created a really simple bubble chart that kind of looked like a spider, and I showed them how they could take this one piece of content— my copywriter calls it the hero content, this would be the blog— and break it up into multiple pieces of content. My little spider blurbs, and I showed them how they could use this one piece of content in all these different ways. They perked right up in their chairs and they started taking notes. And I think at least half of them are ready to start a blog. So that's what I want to talk about today. I want you to just kind of reflect on when you think about blogging, what comes to mind? And you know, before I started blogging, when I thought about blogging, I thought about somebody that is a writer that sits down at their computer and writes out this long drawn-out personal story. You know, about their life or about their experiences. And it was just really, it was a lot of words. And that was not something that I wanted to do. And my mind got shifted as I got started blogging because I wasn't there to blog about personal stuff or trips or anything weird like that. And it's not that it's weird, but in my mind it didn't fit my business. So that was weird. But what if I started blogging about pieces of content that were helpful to my audience that showed something in a very explanatory way, like my subscription box, to my audience in a written form. And so I started doing that almost 3 years now. And what we've done is we've created a lot of content that's really sticky to my business. It helps my audience, and it's finding new people. I'm finding new followers organically all the time with my blog content. And we talk about traffic a lot. We talk about building our audience a lot. And if we can do more things in our business that bring new followers organically, that's what we want to do. Spending a lot of money to build an audience is really hard. It's really hard for new business owners. It's been really challenging for mature business owners. So if there's anything that we can add to our business that's going to drive traffic to our website and nurture and build our audience. Blogging is definitely one of those. And I'm going to tell you what this looks like. Let's just start with what does this look like for a subscription box business? I do one blog every week and that freaked them out too. They were like, I can't do that. I don't have time for that. But what if this looked like 2 blogs a month for you? When we get through this conversation, if you are having an aha moment, like I can do this, then I want you to start with 2 blogs a month. And I'm going to tell you, you're probably doing every piece I'm about to talk about except the blog. We're talking about this hero piece of content. So that is just the main piece of content that all these spider legs stem off of. And when I'm talking about spider legs, I'm talking about emails. I'm talking about Facebook or Instagram Lives. I'm talking about posts on your social media. I'm talking about short videos like Reels and TikToks. This is also Pinterest pins. It can also be a podcast if you have one of those. So if you're doing a multitude of those things, and there's not one piece of content that is funneling into all those things. You're probably doing an email that's different from your live, that's different from your post, that's different from your short video, that's different from your Pinterest pins. So you're creating a whole bunch of little content when really all you need to do is create the one hero piece of content that will funnel into the email. So if I create a blog post, I now have an email. If I create a meaty enough blog post, like 5 challenges subscription box owners face. So that could be a blog for my audience of subscription box owners. And what if that turned into 5 different emails? I took 5 challenges that subscription box owners face, wrote a blog about it, made 5 different topics, and then I had 5 emails I could now send out over the next quarter to nurture my audience. I could also do a Facebook Live and I could talk about those same 5 things, 5 challenges that subscription box owners face. I've got 5 posts, maybe even 6 posts. I can do 1 post of each of those challenges, and then I can do 1 roundup post that lists all those challenges. So instantly I have now 6 social media pieces of content for the month. I could do a Reel or a TikTok talking about the 5 challenges. Put it to some trendy music, do the little word bubbles as I'm pointing to them. I could also talk about it on a podcast. I could sit down and have a real true depth conversation about the challenges, those 5 challenges that subscription box owners face. And each one of those challenges also would make a great Pinterest pin and also kind of that roundup one like we talked about on the post. So now I've created all this content with one blog article, one blog post. Created email, I created Facebook Live, I've created multiple social media posts, created short video, I've created a whole podcast episode, and I've got lots of Pinterest pins that I can use to create that. And now people searching on the internet about the challenges of subscription box owners or things that subscription box owners should know, I'm going to have content that's going to organically pop up in their feed and it's going to take them to this one blog post that lives on my website. From there, I'm going to continue to nurture them. I'm going to have links to a freebie or an opt-in on that blog. I might have something they can purchase on that blog. So I'm bringing traffic into my website organically because of this blog post and all the SEO that I can put in this blog post. And I'm also batch creating content for all these other pieces that I need to have content every single month. We don't put our content high on the priority list as subscription box owners. We don't make it a part of our daily routine for content. So if we just spent a little time creating this one hero piece that we could use in so many different ways, we've got content for the whole month. If you did this twice a month, you would have enough content for the entire month. If you wrote 2 blogs a month, I write them every week. And so here's the other thing that we can do. If we have a VA, if we have help in our business, we can write the one blog post and our VA can turn that into an email. Our VA can create social media posts with that. Our VA can turn those into Pinterest pins. And then all I have to do is show up live, make a quick video and do a podcast. But my VA can help me with all the other copy items that I need because she has the copy. She has the copy in front of her. She can turn it into an email format. She could turn it into 5 emails. Instead of one. So I want you to think about that on a bigger scale. Do you have a hero piece of content that you're using right now? And maybe that's a Facebook Live. Maybe you're going live once a week and from that live, you're turning it into an email. And then you're also taking some things from that live and you're turning them into posts or maybe a short video. But what if you turned that live into a blog post? Because a blog lives forever. That live is going to die out. It's going to get some social media views. It's going to get some engagement, but over a week or two, it's going to start to really fade away. A blog post has so much SEO in it that it lives on forever. Pinterest pins from years ago still get my top hits, thousands of hits every single month, stuff that I wrote in 2018. So this is content that's going to live forever. It's going to constantly bring people back to your website. And you might be sitting there thinking, okay, I'm with you, Sarah, I can see this, but you know, I don't have a membership like you. I don't, I don't teach people stuff. So let me tell you how I use it in my retail business. You guys know I have this monogram box. And so I do basically one of my blogs every single month. Is for my box. So it's a box reveal. So let's just break that down into all these spider legs. So I will write a blog about the inspiration for that month's box. So it's, it's my box reveal. I'll start the blog with the inspiration. Here's the inspiration behind it. This is why I picked the things. This is why I use the color palette that I use. This is the inspiration. So that's how I start the blog. And then I'm going to take every piece, every item in that box. And I'm going to talk about it. So here's the main thing in the box. I start with the main thing, the bigger item, the, what the whole box is centered around. And I have a picture of it and I talk about this item and I get some great keywords in there. And I talk about the next item and I've got a picture and I talk about the next item and I've got a picture. So I've got all 4 items of my subscription box. I'm basically doing a box reveal inside a blog. So now I have my whole box in there and at the bottom of the blog, I'm telling them more about my subscription box. Do you know that you could have a monogram box every single month? I'm giving them information and I'm giving them a place where they can either get on my waitlist or they can join now. And so that's my blog post. It's super simple. I do that on a Facebook Live every single month. This can also go in my email. I can send that in an email. And you know what? If I have 10 of something left over at the end of the month, I can put a link in that email and said, Do you love this bag? I have 10 extras. Grab one here. Now I'm making sales off of that. I created all these pictures to go in this blog post. So I have the picture of everything in my box. Then I have a picture of each item separately. I have lifestyle pictures, people using them. Now I have all these posts that can go on my social media that are from the blog. I can make an unboxing with a Reel or TikTok, and every one of these items could be a Pinterest pin as well. So that's how I could use this. For my subscription box. And everyone listening that has a subscription box can use it in the same way once a month. But then I'm going to challenge you to do a second blog every single month. My copywriter is awesome. And so she was in there giving people different examples of ways that they could create a second blog that wasn't, you know, a box reveal. I wanted to share some of those with you because it might spark some ideas for you. And then as we were talking, The members of Scale Your Box were like, oh, I've got some ideas. So Marilee came up with some ideas with Jonica's Bakery Box. She said, you know, Jonica's Box, you could easily do a blog with how to create a dessert display. Show us how to put our desserts in a way that would be fun for parties and hosting different events. So you could show someone how to decorate. If you have a DIY, you could show someone how to decorate for spring, how to decorate for fall, how to decorate your mantel, how to decorate your table, how to decorate whatever. And you can use them seasonally. She also said for Jonica's Bakery Box, you could do quick and easy recipes, not the recipes of her bakery items in her bakery, but what are some quick and easy recipes that she might use at home to make dinner or some other, my quick chocolate chip cookie recipe or something like that. Those would be great. And you can create an opt-in right in the blog with those ingredients, with the recipe, they could download it. You now grab their email. That's what we want to do. And so you have that in there. She could also write a blog about introducing unique ingredients for everyday treats. So what are some ingredients that maybe Jonica uses regularly that, you know, normal non-bakery bakers wouldn't use and teach us how to use those. Those would be great blog posts that she could do once a month. The other suggestion she had was for Missy and her bra box. She could do a blog all about bra sizes. Like, that gets complicated. Sometimes I think it's more complicated than calculus. But what do the bra sizes mean and how do you know, you know, your bra size? She could teach us about that. She could do a blog about how wearing the right bra increases your confidence, how it makes you look slimmer, how it makes your posture better. All of those different ways. That Missy could incorporate that into her business. She could do a box reveal once, and then she could take an informational educational piece. And that could be her second blog for the month. As this discussion was going on, I asked the members of the group and I said, what could you write about? What could you blog about aside from your own subscription box? And I wanted to share some of these really great ideas that they came up with, because here's what I'm wanting to get out of you. I'm wanting you to brainstorm this for your specific niche, for your subscription box, for your business. And these things, if you just gave yourself an hour and you sat down and you just started to brainstorm some ideas, you could come up with a whole list of them. And if you can come up with a whole list of them and just put them on your Trello board, put them in a Word document, save them somewhere. Then when you come back to write the blogs, you don't have to think from scratch. You've got the ideas already. And all you have to do is start writing them. So here's some examples that some of the members of the group came up with. Darcy, she has the snail, Hail the Snail Mail. She said, I can write a blog about 5 things to say in a sympathy card. How awesome is that? How many times do we get out a sympathy card to write to someone and we just don't know what to say? It's such a hard time. And if I went to Google and I wrote what to say in a sympathy card, you know, I'm looking for some help here and Darcy's her blog pops up and I read through here and I'm realizing that she's really smart about this. And yes, I can use these examples. And then she's telling me about her snail mail subscription. I'm now in Darcy's world where I never would have been before because I'm not over there Googling greeting card subscription. I'm trying to solve a problem that I'm dealing with. I'm trying to figure out what to write in a sympathy card. And now I found her. And here's what's happening. She's establishing her authority right here, and that develops a know, like, and trust factor. So what could you do that establishes your authority in your space? For Jonica, it's being knowledgeable about the bakery items, bakery tools, how to help you. So that's going to establish her. For Missy, it's being knowledgeable about bra sizes and measurements and how it fits on your body and what it does for you. That's going to establish her know, like, and trust factor. Rhonda mentioned a great one while we were in this conversation. She has a subscription for dog bandanas and she said, I could write a blog post about how often to wash your dog's bed and other belongings. It's perfect because she sells dog bandanas. She's not going to write a blog about how to make a dog bandana. She's going to write a blog that would pull people in that have a dog and then she's going to entice them with her bandana. She's got the perfect person going and reading her blog. I might have a new dog. I'm not sure how often I should wash their bed. What shampoo should I use? How often do you give your dog a bath? Any of those things. And then I'm going to see her cute dog bandanas and I'm going to be like, oh, this is cool. And I'm going to start clicking around on her website. And now I've just entered Rhonda's space and now I'm into her world. Just from a blog that I found by either looking on Pinterest, by Googling, any kind of search organically. I found Rhonda that I may never have found before because I probably would not have been shopping for dog bandanas, but now I want one, especially because they're personalized. I love personalized stuff. I was just trying to solve a problem. I was just looking for an answer to solve my problem of not knowing how often to wash my dog's bed. Shannon was on there and she was, she said I could write a blog about 3 goat milk products that help with eczema. Do you see what I'm getting at here? All these examples are establishing someone's authority in their niche. My daughter has eczema. We're constantly dealing with different creams. And now I'm going to know that I can use these 3 goat milk products on my daughter's skin and they might help her. So if I'm searching ways to treat eczema, ways to help eczema, soaps I should be using on my daughter's eczema skin, I'm going to come across Shanna's blog post and it might lead me to her subscription. So I want you to think about ways that you could incorporate this into your business as a way to drive organic traffic to your website. And what we need to do in this blog post is establish our authority. In this space? What makes you knowledgeable about what you do? This builds our know, like, and trust factor. And then we really want to serve them before we sell to them. So by creating this educational and informational blog post, we're able to serve before we ask them for a sale. So they're going to trust us because we're, we're serving them first. And then this goes back to our blog post. So Rhonda's idea 5 things to say in a sympathy card is now her blog post. She now has an email, 5 things to say in a sympathy card. She can just take the blog post and put that into an email. She can talk about it on a Facebook Live. She can talk about how it's really hard to put words down when this happens and we don't know what to say and we want to be meaningful and we want to be sympathetic, but sometimes we just don't know what to say. And so she can help us with that. And she can talk about that on a Facebook Live. Instantly, she now has content to show up live in front of her audience. She can do 5 different posts. She could make a TikTok or a Reel. She could talk about it on a podcast if she had one. She could do different Pinterest pins with her cute greeting cards in them and things to say in them. She could do this for lots of different scenarios. Same thing with Rhonda and her dog bandanas. She could talk about this in an email. This is a nurture email. We're just giving them information and all these things spider out from that one hero piece that we created. And it doesn't have to take long. Really, all you need is 30-45 minutes of quiet time to sit and think. And it's very, very helpful to know your topic before you sit down and write, because it could take you 30-45 minutes to figure out your topic before you ever get started. And so what is great to do is to really do a brainstorming session. We do it about once a quarter and I do it with my team. And so we get on once a quarter and we're going to do brainstorming on what blog topics that we're going to talk about over the next quarter. I know every one of them is going to have a monogram box in it and every one of them is going to have a t-shirt club. So automatically I have 2 blog posts every single month that are locked. I need 2 others. So in my t-shirt club blog post, I give them 5 ways to style the same t-shirt. I can send that in an email. I could do that on a Facebook Live. I can do some wardrobe changes. I could do it on a mannequin, show them the different things that I've layered with the t-shirt. I got 5 different posts because I've already taken those images for the blog. I can do that on a quick short video for Reels and TikTok, style my mannequin, Look number 1, and I can put it there. Look number 2, and I can style it there. I can do lots of Pinterest pins with that. Again, that's one piece. So figure out your content plan for the quarter or do a month at a time if a quarter feels big. And then when you sit down to write the blog, it doesn't take as much time because you're not thinking about all the information going into it. So here's my challenge to you. Can you start a blog for your business? Our goal is to constantly bring new people into our business and we want to connect with them. This is another connection point we can have. So can you write 2 blogs a month right now if you're currently not writing a blog? If you're writing a blog, are you doing it weekly? Are you doing it monthly? You're doing it monthly, just one a month. Can you add another? If you're already doing 2 times a month, how do we layer in more, more content, more eyes, more SEO, more organic non-paid traffic? That's what we're doing here. So that's my challenge to you. I'd love to know if this sparks some ideas for you to start your own blog. So let me know, hit me up on social media over at How to Start a Subscription Box and let me know that you started a blog and what you're talking about. We'll be back next week for another great episode. Make sure you subscribe to the Launch Your Box podcast. I'd love for you to take a minute to rate and review it. Let me know which episode is your favorite so far. Don't forget to join me next week right here.