Content Writing Guide: Types + Tips for Businesses

Content writing allows ecommerce companies to build credibility and authenticity with customers. Whether it’s through blogs, emails, or social media posts, great content helps you attract new customers and strengthen relationships with your current base. Plus, there’s revenue at stake. In a survey of 1,500 marketers, HubSpot found that blog posts and search engine optimization (SEO) content were ranked as the top content marketing channels in terms of return on investment (ROI). 

You don’t need expert writing skills to create content that generates revenue for your company. This guide explains content writing basics, details how you can get started, and highlights expert advice from ecommerce businesses succeeding with their content.

What is content writing?

Content writing is the process of creating written assets for your website, blog, or social media channels. For ecommerce store owners, blog posts, emails, website copy, product descriptions, and social media posts are all examples of written content you can publish. 

Great content writing allows you to stand out from your competition and can build brand trust and credibility by showing your expertise. Compelling storytelling can bring readers into the fold, giving them a reason to care not just about your products and services, but the people and ideas behind them.

Depending on the size of your business, write content yourself, hire a full-time writer, or rely on freelance writers you pay per piece to create content that resonates with your audience. 

Types of content writing

There are a few different types of content writing:

• Blog posts. This long-form content is typically published on your website or related blog and seeks to provide value and showcase your expertise. For example, Canyon Coffee’s blog features content like recipes and insightful interviews.

• SEO content. This includes both blog and website content. Built around SEO basics like targeted keywords and search engine-friendly structure, it can help you rank on search engine results pages (SERPs) 

• Social media. You can write copy for posts on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and X to entertain and inform customers. 

• Product descriptions. A well-written product description can turn a browser into a customer. Dr. Squatch, which sells men’s skin care products, highlights scents and ingredients in a rugged voice and tone.

• Website copy. The copy on your website informs customers about your brand, building your identity. For instance, chocolate maker Taza takes an informative and approachable tone, explaining what makes their products and processes unique and rooted in ethical practices. 

• Email marketing. With emails, you can communicate what makes your company unique, offer exclusive discounts, and announce your newest products. Nail care company Olive & June connects with customers by using a fun and creative writing style in emails, such as a quiz asking, “What does your polish say about you?”

• Longform content. Longform content is over 1,000 words. Other than blogs, it can include thought leadership, case studies, or white papers based on original research. The goal is often to position your brand as a trusted industry expert. 

How to start content writing

1. Understand your audience
2. Brainstorm relevant topics and create a content calendar
3. Start writing
4. Edit
5. Get the most mileage from your content

This workflow provides a framework, whether you plan to write content yourself or hire someone to create it:

1. Understand your audience

To know what your audience wants to read, begin by conducting market research. You can run surveys on your website or social media channels, or browse competitors’ sites to see what kind of topics resonate with segments of your target audience. 

The goal for this stage of the process is to learn what topics or products your customers want to know more about, as well as how to best communicate with them.

Use Shopify’s segmentation tools to learn more about customers, group them into actionable segments based on purchase history and preferences. Start tracking all customer feedback you get—Yelp reviews, comments from customers, email surveys—in a spreadsheet. Lulus maintains a database of raw customer feedback from exit surveys, giving it a well of ideas all based on direct input from customers.

2. Brainstorm relevant topics and create a content calendar. 

Make a list of content ideas that your customers want to read about. AI tools like ChatGPT or Claude can generate topics for you to put your brand’s unique spin on. You can reference key metrics from your own data, such as website traffic to specific product pages and sales records, to brainstorm ideas. 

Create a list of short-tail and long-tail keywords. The former are typically short phrases with high search volume, like “running shoes,” while the latter have three or more words, low search volume, and specific intent (for example, “best running shoes for women with low arches”). These longer keyword phrases comprise 70% of search traffic. You can use SEO tools like Semrush to help you identify keyword gaps in your content. 

For long-form content and social media posts, create a content calendar so you know when assets need to be ready to be published. For example, you may want to publish certain topics around specific seasons, holidays, or trends. A content calendar can help you stay organized and work backwards from those dates. 

3. Start writing

Pick a keyword from your list and start researching, either with trusted external sources or (even better) an internal subject matter expert from your company. This kind of unique perspective will help your content stand out from your competition and build credibility. Build an outline based on the information you’ve researched, then write to fill out each section. 

Depending on the size of your business, you may have different people or teams write different kinds of content. You can hire copywriters for product pages and website copy, social media copywriters and content developers, content strategy and SEO teams for blogs, and researchers who work with internal specialists on white papers. 

Kevin Espiritu of Epic Gardening treats his blog like a specialized media publication with expert writers and subject matter review. “All of our writers are garden writers, Kevin says on an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast. “They’re trained in some kind of gardening. Maybe their specialty is flowers, or ornamentals, or bushes. And so we’ll pick the right writer for the right topic. But then we also have all articles passed through what we call a “hort” review. So our horticulturist will look at it, check it for accuracy.”

In addition to subject matter expertise, it helps to have brand guidelines in place that clearly detail the voice and tone you want to use to resonate with your target audience, with specifics on how each content type should sound (your social media posts and white papers will naturally sound different). Mention key phrasing to use and avoid, how you refer to your products and your brand, and your brand persona, if you have one. Consider including editorial and style guides to maintain consistency. These often align with popular stylebooks like AP and Chicago and mention specific dictionaries to refer to (Merriam-Webster vs. Oxford, for example). 

You can use AI tools like ChatGPT or Claude to build an outline or generate a rough draft, but make sure your content is unique and showcases your viewpoint. Marketing expert Nik Sharma advises that brands should publish content that reflects their authentic voice and understanding. “I think AI is great for your first draft,” he says on an episode of Shopify Masters. It’ll save you the first 40 minutes of writing something or coming up with an idea of what to put down. But the final draft is something that should be massaged by you, the owner, the operator, before it goes out.

4. Edit

Here are some questions to ask yourself when editing your content:

• Are the grammar, spelling, and punctuation correct and consistent?

• Is the formatting accurate and suitable for the channel? 

• Blog posts and SEO content: Do you have an H1 (main headline), H2s (subheads), and a target keyword used evenly throughout?

• Emails: Do you have an eye-catching subject line? Is the copy short and to the point?

• Social media: Is this something that will catch attention instantly?

• Product descriptions and website copy: Can someone who has never heard of the company or products understand what this is and how it helps them?

• Do sentences flow, or are there abrupt transitions?

• Is this aligned with internal brand guidelines or style guide?

• Does this read as if it came from this specific company?

• How does this help the customer?

Use tools like Google Docs and Grammarly to spot errors and make suggestions. Many AI copywriting tools identify improvements in brand voice, grammar, spelling, and word choice, helping you fine-tune your content. You can also try reading your copy aloud to see how it flows. 

5. Get the most mileage from your content

Written content isn’t just a one-and-done thing. Look for ways to repurpose and amplify content to get the most out of an idea. 

For example, here’s how a coffee company can repurpose a blog post about how to make a better cup of java at home:

• A script for a YouTube video showing how your founder brews at home.

• An engaging Instagram carousel with the step-by-step process illustrated in pictures or videos.

• Improved product descriptions for your bags of coffee beans, educating customers on how to best brew the coffee.

• An email newsletter titled “5 Ways You Can Brew Coffee Like a Barista.”

Shopify makes it easy to distribute blog posts, social media posts, and emails from the same platform where you manage your ecommerce store. Shopify features built-in blogging and content marketing tools like content planning and SEO.