I have been looking for ways to improve the content on my store. Well, to be honest, looking for ways to boost relevant seo-desired content on my store. Partly looking for seo, partly looking to actually make my site even more useful. The two obvious topics are blogs and forums. I am familiar with both and have no issue with the actual installation of either into my site. my question though is how much do they actually bring to a store?

a forum seems like it would be the most beneficial. Giving customers a dedicated place to talk about industry related topics. Even more, the industry itself (comics) has a very limited number of large decent forums to participate in, so it lends itself to that nicely. However moderation seems like it would be a must, and also seems, depending on how large they became, like it could be more work than it turns out to be worth.

a blog seems like the simplest to maintain, however I have always wondered what the general public feels a blog brings to a site. I know I personally don't care about any retail blog and just wondered if I am in the minority or majority?

I have a newsletter, but at this time it is very much a snapshot in time sort of thing. So archiving it and linking to it seems to make very little sense. Current customers won't care what new store feature went live last year or that I offered 50% off on such and such a book last month.

I realize the fourth option is the most prevalent one; Article Pages. Unfortunately I barely have the time to work on the site and store as is, let alone dedicate 3-5 hours a week writing articles that try to provide some real sort of relevance.

Any thoughts or suggestions are appreciated.

I would say go with a blog if your not sure how big your traffic numbers are. The reason for that would be that if you don't have a lot of visitors - getting people in and posting on the forums might be harder than starting to write a few blog posts a week. However if you have plenty of traffic and people coming in and out everyday a set of forums might be a good way to go.

If a company has a blog or a public forum for purposes other than technical support I tend to assume it's being run by children who are more interested in being popular on the internet than running an actual business, and even if I'm wrong, keeping them free of garbage is a full-time job. If you don't have time to write relevant or interesting content then why should anyone take the time to read it?

Yeah, I agree - I wouldn't just write for the sake of writing stuff. If you could make it relevant to what you are selling or interesting enough to keep people coming back then that would be a good way to go.

If you have useful content, useful visitors will follow.

If your store sells slip and slides, do reviews, recommend products etc etc, it will improve not only your rapport with customers but should give you a nice little search engine and sales boost :)

Sorry, I never meant writing for the sake of writing stuff. My question was more directed at "What are some easy ways to generate meaningful content."

Being an oscommerce site it does support reviews. I've made a push towards getting customers to write more reviews. I have always questioned store owners doing reviews on products, not wanting to seem biased or with motive, but maybe that's not a bad idea.

As I said, I agree that a blog doesn't seem like the best for a small store. Typically not enough going on to keep it current and updated frequently. Forums are... well.. that was more just looking at the fact that there aren't a ton of great forums in my industry. I would love to provide a huge meaningful forum to the industry but just don't have the inclination to keep it running smoothly (or moderate the moderators at the very least).

Will keep looking at things. Thanks for the reply.