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Write a simple "How To" guide for your own promotional purposes



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Write a simple "How To" guide for your own promotional purposes

Everyone is trying to make money online through marketing and PPC campaigns but there are few of us who are writing "How To" guides in order to spread the word about our own businesses.  Now, you can't just write a "How To" guide that promotes your own business and services in a way that makes you look like an egotistical business.  You will have to write up something that helps people set up a blog or website, and sprinkle in there a few links aimed at your own business, and this will help you bring in plenty of visitors if the guide is high quality and informational Write a simple "How To" guide for your own promotional purposes

If you plan on blatantly promoting yourself within your guide, you won't see the results I'm going to mention, later on, so you should probably change your approach and just listen to what I have to say Write a simple "How To" guide for your own promotional purposes

Write something that is high quality
Focus on the "How To" guide in a way that you aren't thinking about how you're going to make money from it.  Write it in a way that you're genuinely trying to help others out and they will see you as the authority to contact if they do run into a snag. 

The better you write your "How To" guides, the more likely you'll be trusted when someone does come across your link and click through.  They will think "Oh hey, this is the company that wrote up the how-to guide that helped me set up my blog!" and they will be more willing to purchase from you.  If you don't have a high quality "how to" guide that offers a lot of information, you won't see an increase in sales.

Your "How To" guide should be at least 20 pages long
When you're writing up your guide you should have a minimum of 20 pages of content, not 20 pages of content combined with images, and this is because you want to give away massive amounts of content to anyone that needs it. 

After you wrote up your content, now you can go through it and add images, and you will be amazed at how your 20 pages of content will now turn into 40+ pages Write a simple "How To" guide for your own promotional purposes

If you're writing a guide that shows someone how to do something, you'll want to add in plenty of screenshots or pictures to show someone exactly what to do.  People learn in different ways, and adding the right images can help those who are visual learners, so don't be surprised if your guide turns into something that is 100+ pages and not the 40+ like I mentioned above!

Give it away for FREE to get it distributed more
Yes, you just read that right, you will want to give away your new "how to" guide away for free to anyone that wants it.  Think about it, you could sell your guide for $1 and make 10 sales a month or you could give it away for free to 1,000+ people a month and make 100s of sales easily from people reading through your guide and then trusting you more.

Giving away detailed guides to help people with a problem will show you as an authority that isn't trying to profit off of them.  You will be seen as a mentor, an authority, a teacher, and just someone who is trying to help out.  If you write your guide in a way that shows you're trying to help, people will be more willing to purchase from you.

Put some promotional coupons in there for tracking purposes
If you are giving away your guide for free, which I hope you are, you will want to put in some promotional coupons in there to see who is coming to your website because of your guide.  You can do something like "You get 25% off all of our services because you loved this guide!" and you will see who uses the coupon Write a simple "How To" guide for your own promotional purposes 

You will have to use a single coupon code for this, you can't use a general one that gives anyone 25% off, and this is because someone who lands on a 3rd party website and sees your 25% off promotion using "25off" code will use it and you won't be able to differentiate them from someone who downloaded your guide.


In conclusion
People all over the world are trying this method, but not many of them are doing it right, and this means there is an opportunity for you to still.  All you have to do is focus on the person and try to help them.  You don't want to write your guide in a way that pushes your products or services on every page, you want to be as helpful as possible, and this will increase your trust and people will pay you to help them out if they can't do it themselves.


Remember to follow me!
https://www.seoclerks.com/user/TommyCarey


Thanks!

Tommy Carey

Comments

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Chinet23
A lot of people, especially the novice, search for "how to" guides, in general, to help them know the things they want to learn. This is an opportunity to promote your business. But as you mentioned, you have to do is focus on the person and try to help them, to make it effective and helpful. It will then follow writing a detailed and well thought of content and not just something hurriedly done just to drive sales. I'm glad that you stressed this enough because you can kill the bird with two stones, helping other people with the information they need and at the same time, promote your business. You can strike a balance in between to make it work.



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Corzhens
The “how to guide” is beneficial to those in need of the knowledge. That is very common in the cooking or culinary industry especially to the young guys who want to learn how to cook. The recipe is the traditional “how to guide” that is still being used today for the benefit of the public in general. The recipe can give you the entire procedure on how to cook a particular dish and that’s it. You can be a good cook with that small sheet of paper where the recipe is written.



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amelia88
I definitely think a free "how-to" guide is a great way of getting people interested in your business and also trusted by people. It's also just a great way of building a profile as an expert in a field and sometimes money can't buy that kind of exposure.



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Chinet23
Mutual benefits indeed. And I agree that by doing this "how-t"o guides makes someone an authority in a certain field. I've seen this from online businesses providing free guides and serves as teasers for people to avail of their services. This is strategically done by sounding genuine to help and not being too pushy with their business.



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amelia88
I definitely think that offering help does assist in building a profile as a trustworthy company. It's a small thing to do - sure, developing a how-to guide does take time, but it's really an investment in securing the trust of your clients and even other businesses that may operate in the same industry.



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Youngshark
Definitely. A lot of people search for online content with the word free inserted at the front. This means that offering the guide for free can be a great way of capturing the right audience. I love the fact that @tommycarey has laid out the essence of having promotional links and messages together with the content.



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Martinsx1
What I have come to understand is that people actually value any kind of information that would be beneficial to them even in the smallest way possible. In our world today, information is power and money, so having such information will be very important to such people without any doubt.



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mitan143
I really appreciate your suggestions in making "How To" guide. It is very helpful and as usual it is very substantial. But in making a "how to" guide, what do you think is the best way to convey your message to your expected readers? Is it through writing or maybe through video to make it more attractive? For me, if you can do both, why not? I think it is better to have both because there are people that still like to read and there are some people that want to learn through video because if it is in written form they got easily bored on reading plain texts.



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amelia88
I definitely think both can be useful. For me, I tend to gravitate towards infographics, so you get the best of both design, pictures and words. I think they're eye catching for readers and hold people's attention - which are important things for how-to guides!



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mitan143
That's nice! I've seen a lot of infographics now a days and you are right, infographics are really interesting and can attract more people to learn something out of it. In fact, my professor back in college told us about the importance of infographics in this generation which become also a trend and I'm glad that they are a lot of nice work that really help out people. Just to let you know, I admire those people who can create awesome infographics. They are very creative!



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rlpzbeermoney
I don't agree with the whole "20 pages" shtick. Majority of the how-to articles online do this where the final and most important advise is buried in the later pages. The first few pages are just there as an introduction. Just get to the point already. I'd rather have 1 page to read than it being chopped up into 20 pages with each page full of ads.



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ballyhara
Me neither hahaha. Honestly, just like you, I like to read articles that after a brief introduction, go straight to the point. Usually, those long articles come full of adds and distractions. If someone wants to extend the information, then make emphasis on the main points, the heavy and clever steps to follow. Your readers will appreciate it.



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rlpzbeermoney
What's worse is those sites that make you have to wait 30 secs just to go to the next link. You have to go through a link shortening website to get to the next page. It's very annoying. I get that they need to be able to generate income for their own needs but is it worth it at the expense of their customers? I think not.



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Martinsx1
I have some experience with articles that are more than 20 pages but still not all the pages that contain useful information and it's annoying reading such articles wasting time. In such situation, having the article being just 5 pages would be better than one with 20 pages.



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rlpzbeermoney
Wouldn't it be much better to just put everything in a long single page than 5 pages? I get that every click = more ads = more money but I'm just curious. Do you think it's better to do a 5 page article or a single long article? Do you think about the viewer's experience when writing the article? Do you think that people don't really mind the 5 pages?



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Zelmontero
I agree to you a twenty page guide is to much. The reader will surely get tired reading the articles. In the end they will surely will not finished reading the article and in the future they if they will probably avoid your work.



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esteban123
I agree that we should write high quality article for our promotional so that many people would be encouraged to read and have them on their respective websites. I would surely give it for free so that many people would be interested to have my promotional article.



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Martinsx1
High quality content is gold when it comes to getting the best out of your promotional and marketing campaigns with writing. If you never had the plans to write high quality content, it's better not to start writing in the first instance.



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Gilgamesh
You give a good ideas that many people like me can benefit through. Continue in what you were doing in giving us a significant tips. I suggest that you shall make a vlog in order to make your ideas more acessible and understandable because some people got bored in reading and they prefer watching than reading that's why it may help you a lot. Lastly, try to make a condensed explanation for shorter sentence rexonstruction to make your blog more readable up to the end. I am speaking in an overall aspects of your blog don't get me wrong. Very good!



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cmoneyspinner
Yes! This works! I know it works because a friend of mine did it! LOL. Write a simple "How To" guide for your own promotional purposes I sure can't speak from personal experience. I can't even write "How To" articles well. There's no way I could write 20 pages.



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Martinsx1
I think that you are the one who is just suppressing your ability to writing more an article that is more than 20 pages. You would be surprised to find that you are capable of writing more than that. It's all about getting your brain to full function at high speed. I used to think that I'm not that good in writing much but look at me now, 20 pages is nothing to me any more.



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DenisP
Are these “How To” eBooks still a viable option in this day and age? I ask because it would seem like the internet is churning out more and more “How To” guides by the minute. Every budding entrepreneur seems to be starting out by writing some sort of guide book.

I bring this up because there can only be so many of these before they start looking like clones of one another. I’ve already noticed many how to guides on SEO which are practically word for word replicas of one another—and the craziest part is that it isn’t that the authors are plagiarizing one another, but that the market is so saturated it’s simply inevitable.



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overcast
Giving away the ebook or any form of material that does the promotion can be one more good option too. I have found out that some of the time promotional purpose can also include having some referral and then connecting with other folks. Though this means you have to be promoting a lot of places. Because single source often may not work. So that being said, I have known some people who tried this and it works.



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Martinsx1
It's more like an indirect advertising with the free ebook that contains your business promotional articles. Most people can't say no to free items, so it's a very important way to getting them to take your promotional information without even knowing about it till they read your book.



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overcast
I have seen some people making use of small blog posts and hosting that as a ebook. And then getting some people to join the mailihng list. I think that also works for getting the traffic. Writing simple things always gets some traffic if we want that. It just takes some efforts.



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Corzhens
That giving away for free is time tested because that strategy is still being used today. It is called sample in layman’s term that you see marketing people giving away products in malls and supermarkets for you to test. I think writing a good How To Guide and giving it away is like spreading the word of your expertise. And if the said How To Guide is beneficial to the public then expect an avalanche of inquiries.



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Martinsx1
Exactly! I have had lots of experience with this giving away of free products especially in the shopping mall and I understand immediately the reason behind such motive. It's good to always exploit every opportunity that you can afford to get your business up and running without much hassle.



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rlpzbeermoney
I understand that giving out samples in malls is a form of advertisement but don't you think they're losing money from doing this? Surely those products didn't come from the pockets of the store manager for example. I know that the money comes from the company itself but still. Would losing money justify reeling in customers?



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Martinsx1
If you are looking at starting to write anything, make sure to have your writing to be of a high quality content. This is the only way to have Google rank your content and your site higher. If it's a hard copy book, it's going to worth a lot to your readers. Readers value contents that are very useful to them.



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Zelmontero
High quality content is really a must if you want a great amount of viewers.Your content is going to be the reason for your readers to come back. They should be interested to your articles so in long run they are still visiting your website or blogs.



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superlicca
Creating "how to" guide is a great help to your business. Having this is like taking an extra step to help people and you are also building a good profile at the same time. But I just don't like the idea of at least 20 pages for "how to" guide. I don't think everyone would love to read a lot of pages. You can just focus on the most important things and be direct to the point.



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Zelmontero
I agree that it will help you to build a good profile. Having a good profile and really helping your readers through your "How to" guide will help you to have loyal readers. The article should be really straight to the point so the reader will not be bored.



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Zelmontero
I like reading "How to" series. It really keep me entertain and I always finished reading the whole article but a twenty page is too long. Writing a "How to" guide is really a promotion to you. People are interested in learning or doing things by their self.



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blackmist
Simple guides are way better because they are direct to the point and more easy to understand. I also agree that writing it with quality are lot more better because it can easily redirect the customers from you. Distributing it for free are common Know a days so it's a good choice than collecting fee for distributing it.



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Chinet23
I'm not sure how the 20 pages guide will work as a promotion. The "how to guides" I've read so far doesn't really provide the nitty gritty of a certain topic but just an overview so you can come back for more. And if you opt to do that, that's the time that you will pay for a premium. Free "how to" guides showed me that if you specifically need this learning, they're the ones who can help. But if it's very detailed and leaves nothing more to learn then it may be the end of it. But maybe, it depends on how it was executed and the niche as well.



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Jeane
if it's very detailed and leaves nothing more to learn then it may be the end of it.

Give something to get something is the principle in play I believe.

You may not get any monetary reward when you provide all the information someone seeks free but there is something you gain should your "how to guide" help that person solve a problem they are dealing with. They'll know you are an expert and they'll for that reason refer people your way when they seek answers to similar questions which might not have been answered in your newsletter. You get more traffic + more prospective customers.



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Chinet23
I understand that by providing free "how to" guide can make someone an expert in that field and they will become the go-to person or an authority that you can trust. I am just used to receiving free guides which are not very detailed and just provide pointers as hints that they are the ones who can solve your problem or who can help and that leave me with questions and thinking about availing their services. I just felt that if it's very detailed, there's nothing more left to be asked but perhaps in the future, as you mentioned certain related questions may arise and you'll be going back to the said writer or expert.



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centurion
Every body in this world who is earning from online have a technique must. Every body who is freelancer and earning from outsourcing world - the person is able to write How to guide for every one. I have been working with internet for the last 7 years and after reading this article I have been decided to write an article about How to Earn from online as a pdf or as an e book and I shall publish the book on my blog or on my website and people will follow my technique. There I shall add some links with screenshot and video lesson also so that I can get benefit also.

Thanks
Centurion



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Connorjunior
Informative article, but I would have to disagree on one point. I don't think the bare minimum of 20 pages is necessary. If one can write the guide precisely, with easy to understand points, then it can be done in less than 20 pages. The main focus should be to make is as easy for the readers to understand as possible. I have seen may guides that are over 100 pages, but the content seems gibberish to the beginners. Don't assume that the readers are expert, instead assume the opposite. If for any reason the content is a bit complex, mention in the beginning that the guide is for intermediate to expert readers.



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HappyLady
I wrote a "How to Make an eBook" to teach myself "How to Make an eBook." I learn by doing, so I answered each of my own questions and learned a lot of things along the way. Now I have my own "How to Make an eBook" resource.

I had not thought of giving it away, but to do so with links to eBooks I have written or am writing, this could be a very good idea.

I am now thinking of sending a lot of people I know a free eBook on how to make an eBook as many would like to and have no idea how to do so. Or they have done so, but with lots of mistakes. Of course, my accompanying email will tell them about the book I want to sell, and how they can buy it.



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theresajane
I am actually one of the persons who usually search for "How-to" guides. I must say that these guides are very effective in promotional purposes. People like me learn and at the same time, get curious and follow the site. It is a technique that will benefit both sides. Great thread!



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stormbreaker10
I learned from this discussion. I think this discussion is can become one of the mindset foundation if your doing business, in general.



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focusedwriter10
The relevance of this discussion cannot be underrated. Personally, I depend on the internet to learn anything that I am intending to learn. Guess what? "How to..." and "free " are two terms that I solely depend on.

In addition, any internet user who at some point want to know a way doing something will always choose the title" How to", meaning it is an easier means of showcasing your professionalism while promoting your services.



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