You have a lot of information locked away in that head of yours. Information (and skill) that people are willing to pay for dearly. Your job is to get that information and your skill into your prospects hands as often as possible.
That’s where writing How-To articles comes in…
Let’s say you are a remodeler, and you specialize in green building initiatives. You could kill multiple birds with one stone by creating How-To articles for consumers on how to become energy-efficient and save money around the house. Writing these types of articles will:
- Expose prospects to your company, brand and message
- Plant an impression in their minds about your business
- Sets you up as an expert
- Puts you above the pack when they are ready to buy
- Increases web traffic over time to your site
So let’s break it down:
- Expose your company and message – How-To articles target the early stage shopper. I say that because as a marketer, I want to tell them what they need to do, then charge them to do it. Same thing with you. You want to give Mrs. Jones tips on cutting energy costs, but when it comes time to install new windows, you want her to hire you to do it.
- Plant an impression – Impressions are what make people buy over time. Unless you are a plumber and the crapper is overflowing, people need to be exposed to your message over time, so being seen by a prospect is a good thing and leads to new business over time.
- Sets you up as the expert – When you write enough How-To articles, people will position you as the expert in the topic you are talking about. You aren’t going to get there writing one article and being done with it, you need to spend time crafting yourself as the expert. The benefit to this is that over time, people will seek you out AND price will not be the primary topic of conversation, your skills will.
- Puts you above the pack – This one is obvious, if you are the expert who has positioned themselves properly in the marketplace providing consumers with enough impressions to develop a positive opinion of you, then you have moved yourself to the head of the pack above all of your slacker competition who are sitting around doing nothing to promote themselves.
- Increase web traffic – Having 5, 10, 50 short, 250 word articles on your website will increase your organic traffic tremendously over time. The more you write, the more traffic you will get, I promise. And
And you don’t even have to be the best writer or a writer at all. You can use video to do the same thing. In fact, video How-To’s do a better job of teaching and will move you into “expert status” faster because people now have multiple touches or “impressions” of you and your company during the same video.