In the navigation panel, click into Blog posts and we'll take a look at how we work with blogs and blog posts in the admin. From this section you can:

• Edit a blog post: This page shows you the list of blog posts that have been written for your store. Using the filter and search facility, you can find specific posts. For the moment however, there is just the one, "First Post" written by Shopify. Clicking on the title of a blog post will open it up for editing - we'll take a look at this a little later.
• Add blog post: When you want to publish a new post, you will start the process by clicking on the Add blog post button at the top-right.
  
  

• Bulk actions: On selecting one or more blog posts using the checkboxes to the left of the title of each post, a dropdown menu will be revealed with options to: publish, unpublish or delete the selected posts. You can also add or remove tags for the selected post.

• Manage blogs: You can in fact have more than one blog. Clicking on the Manage blogs button brings you through to a section where you can manage the settings for your blog and add another blog if you so wish. For each blog, you can control the blog title, page title, description and address. You can also set up Feedburner statistics and control how comments work on your blog.

Before we look at adding and editing blog posts, let's go and see how to set up your blog as you want it. From the "Blog posts" section, click on the button Manage blogs at the top-right. You will now have the list of blogs set up for your store in front of you. For the moment, there is only the "News" blog. You can add another blog by clicking Add a blog but we're going to look at the setting for the "News" blog instead. To do so, click on the blog title "News".

The settings for a blog are very simple. You can choose the title for the blog - this appears on every page of your blog so it's worth getting it as you want it. Further down the page, there are the usual SEO settings: page title, page description and handle. It is of course important to customize the page title and description for your blog. Make them attractive so that people that see your blog in the search engines will want to read it.

With some themes, the blog will have a recent blog posts feature. Changing the handle for the "News" blog will break this feature. It's set up to work with the handle "news". So if you want this feature, it's best not to change it unless you're ready to edit the theme templates.

Continuing on with the other settings, "Feedburner URL" is used for setting up Feedburner for your blog. It's useful to have statistics for your blog - to know how many people are subscribed to your blog's news feed and how many people are looking at each post you publish. Feedburner, a service provided by Google, will provide you with these statistics. You can find out more on the Feedburner website.

In general, blogs also offer the possibility for visitors to comment on posts. This can be a great way to interact with your visitors and clients. In the blog settings, you can choose whether comments are allowed or not. There are three options:

• Comments are disabled: This is the default setting for a new blog and means there is no way for your store's visitors to comment on the blog.
• Comments are allowed, pending moderation: With this option, comments must first be approved by you before they are published.
• Comments are allowed, and are automatically published: With the third option, comments are automatically published to your blog as soon as they are submitted. You can remove comments that you don't want after they have been published.

When a comment is submitted to your blog, it will be checked to make sure it is not spam before you see it. This can sometimes slow down the process a little. If a comment is seen as spam, it will not be published.

When you are finished editing the settings for your blog, click the Save button.

Deleting The "First Post"

Before you get started writing for your blog, it's best to delete the blog post that comes as standard when you create a new store - "First Post". It's not relevant to your audience and it is marked as authored by Shopify.

To delete the post, open up the blogs posts section. Select the "First Post" by selecting the checkbox to the left of the post's title. In the dropdown menu that is revealed, click on Delete blog posts. In the pop-up that appears, confirm that you wish to delete the blog post.

Writing A New Post For Your Blog

Open up the blogs posts section and click on the button Add blog post at the top-right. You will now have a blank form in front of you, very similar to that for a page.

You will need to complete the following fields for your post:

• Blog post title: This is probably the most important element of the post as most people will decide whether or not to read the post based on it. In fact, on average out of ten people, eight will read the post title and only two will read the post - so it's got to be good.
• Content: This is the main text for your post. Make it interesting and remember images can help to make the post more attractive. In fact, I recommend you include attractive images with every post. You have all the same options for formatting your text here as you did for a page.

• Excerpt: You may notice that some blogs display full posts on the main blog page while others only display an introduction to each post and a link to read more. This text that introduces the post is called an excerpt. If you want to choose what is shown as the excerpt, click on the link Add an excerpt just below the content. This will reveal the field for the excerpt. Note that each theme may treat excerpts differently so check how your chosen themes displays them.
• Author, blog and publish date: Below the content and excerpt fields, you can specify the author, the blog the post is to be published to and the date you want the post published on.
  
  

• Tags: For each blog post, you can choose a set of tags. These are used to categorize the post. How these are displayed on your blog is completely dependent on your theme. Some themes will display a list of tags that can be used to find posts of interest. Check how your theme displays tags on the blog.

• Page title and description: When you choose the title for your post and start to write the content, the page title and description fields further down the page will automatically be completed. However, as for products, collections and pages, you can customize the page title and page description for a blog post as you like. The page title is the most prominent element shown in search engines results. So if your post appears in a results page, it is mostly down to the page title to encourage a click. The search engines will also often, though not always, use the page description in search results.
• Visibility: By default, the visibility will be set to "visible" and when you save your post, it will be published directly to your blog. If you want to continue editing your post or are not yet ready to publish, set the visibility to "hidden" instead. I'll talk about this a little more in the next section.

If you would like to learn more about writing compelling blog posts, I highly recommend you to take a look at Copyblogger.

Publish Your New Blog Post When You're Ready

When you create a new page, it will be available on your store but it won't be easily findable until it is linked to from the navigation or another page. When you publish a new post, on the other hand, it will be available immediately at the top of your blog.

I recommend changing the visibility of the post to "hidden". In that way, when you click the Save button, the post will be saved as a draft and not yet published to your blog.

To do this select "hidden" in the section visibility at the bottom of the page. Preview your post by clicking on the Preview blog post button at the top right.

When you are ready to publish the post, simply edit the post, change the visibility to "visible" and click on the Save button. The post will be published directly to the blog.

Viewing Your Post On Your Storefront

It's always a good idea to see how your new post looks on the storefront - it will not be formatted in the same way as it is in the admin as the theme is different. Double check that the text, paragraph spacing and images are formatted correctly and that links are working as they should be.

If the post is not yet published, use the Preview blog post button to see how the post will look in your store. If you have already published, click the link View it in your store in the "Write your blog post" section.

Managing Your Blog Posts

Let's go back to the blog posts section by clicking Blog posts in the navigation panel. When you start to have more blog posts here, the filter and search facility will become useful. Click on the Filter blog posts button to reveal a menu where you can choose how you want to filter the posts: by visibility, author or tag.

So for example, if you choose "visibility" in the first dropdown, you will have the choice of "visible" or "hidden" in the second dropdown. Make your choice and click the Add filter button. All blogs posts with that particular visibility will be shown. You'll notice the filter will be displayed just under the Filter blog posts button. When you are finished with it, just click the x on the filter to remove it.

You can also find specific blog posts using the search box to the right of the Filter blog posts button. Just type in your search terms and the posts listed below will update to include only the posts that contain those search terms.

When you have found the post you want, simply click the post title to edit that post.

Managing Comments For Your Blog

When someone writes a comment on one of your posts, it will appear in your admin. Depending on how you chose to manage comments, it will either be published automatically or be waiting for you to moderate it.

In the blog posts section, click on the button Manage blog comments. Spam comments are unfortunately very common in this day and age. Shopify handles them quite well though and most genuine spam will be spotted and marked as such. For the comments that are waiting to be moderated, there are usually two choices - you can: approve it to be published by clicking the Approve button or you can delete it using the familiar trash button.

It's very important to respond to the comments on your blog. These are your customers and potential customers. This is another aspect of customer service for your store. When there are new comments awaiting moderation, there will be a notification at the top of the blog posts section. There will also be a notification in the activity feed on the dashboard.

Summary