I encourage all of my clients to write articles about their field. “Post them on your site and let people use them if they link back to you.” I often find myself getting either dead silence, or an instant argument.
“I’m not going to just GIVE away information! That’s what they need to PAY ME FOR!” is a typical response. Often followed by, “And you want me to let people USE this information on their OWN sites as well!? You’re CRAZY!”
Crazy? Maybe. Stupid? No way.
Why you need to give away free information…
Think of it this way: Let’s say that you sell rubber bands of all shapes and sizes. Now, you happen to think that rubber bands are the coolest thing on the planet, and what they can do for people is just amazing. You’ve gone through the steps of getting a domain name, buying the hosting, having a site built and marketed for you, and you think to yourself, “Okay, now the money’s gonna roll right in here!” Right? Maybe.
But let’s say it does. And in your first 3 months of operating your site, you’ve sold a thousand orders for rubber bands. GREAT! Your profit’s hit an all time high, and you’re rolling in it. But you’ve also noticed something else, an increase in “support issue” phone calls and emails. You’re debating on hiring someone JUST to handle your buyers’ questions on why their technique isn’t working, or how to make it work better. Amidst these phone calls are questions like “Can it do _____?” and “How do I make it _____?”
So, you’ve written up a canned response email for questions like this, and you’re still flooded. You’ve got 3 people on a “creative team” developing new ways to use your rubber bands, and they’re furiously writing up MORE canned responses “just in case” the questions come up.
Sales are still skyrocketing, as are the questions. You never imagined the general public would try to use your rubber bands for so many purposes! They have the ideas, but they need your help in making them work.
So why not take their ideas and create a database in the form of articles to show everyone how to use rubber bands? You could write an article on using the really large bands for exercises. You could write another about how a rubber band ball is a great toy for kids, but also holds all your rubber bands in one place for easy retrieval when needed. How about an article on making a musical instrument for a child by using rubber bands of different lengths and thicknesses - like a guitar of sorts? See where I’m going with this?
Articles can give your customers ideas…
What if someone buys a package of your rubber bands, with the sole intention of just using them to bundle things together? They discover they have far too many rubber bands, and want to know what else they could do with them, so they go to the web site of the supplier (that’s you) to scan for “other uses”. Without your articles, they’re left in the dark, and probably regretting that they spent so much money on something they can’t find another use for. They’ll never buy rubber bands again, especially not from you.
But if you show them what can be done with bands that are a different size than the ones they bought, and they think it’s a great idea, guess what!? They’ll probably buy THOSE from you too!
5 Reasons for giving it away…
1. You help your customers and website visitors to know more about your product or service without them having to call or email you.
2. Other web sites that find your information useful will post your articles (with credit to you). This will raise your credibility and get you more traffic.
3. More content to optimize for the search engines and your readers. Include links to other relevant parts of your site (do NOT go overboard here) and you’ve tipped off the search engine spiders to other info, as well as guided your site visitors to related information.
4. More content on your site = one more thing for the search engines to look at when ranking your site. Fresh, updated sites rank much better than stale and unchanging ones.
5. Increased link popularity, which is another thing the search engines like to see.
As you can see, if it’d be good for a rubberband selling company, it’d be good for you. Regardless of whether or not you’re selling a tangible product or a service, explaining that product or service in ways that can benefit the majority is bound to produce great results for you, in many ways.
Popularity: 10% [?]
