We all know that offering free content is a fabulous way to generate interest in your business, establish yourself as an authority, and create trust with your prospects.
Last week, I shared the first 4 of 9 ways to create free content that offers value. If you didn’t read that post yet, you can check it out here. Today I’ll be sharing with you the other 5 methods and how to conduct a self-assessment.
5 Ways to Create Free Content That Offers Value
Method 5: Use Research and Study Results
Using research and study results can help boost your credibility in the eyes of your visitors. There are a couple of different ways you can use research and study results:
A. Interpret the Results: You can link to a study, provide a summary of it and give your take on the results.
B. Use the Results to Support: You can use the results of research and studies to support your argument or position on a certain topic.
Method 6: Ride the Wave of a Hot Topic and Create Urgency
Reporting on a hot topic can be beneficial in a number of ways. If something is in the news and you can spin your coverage in a unique way, it is likely to draw more clicks and attention. You can benefit from getting extra search engine traffic and inbound links as long as the topic remains hot.
This method can be extremely powerful when you are able to tie in the topic directly to your own offerings to create a sense of urgency. Here’s an example of this: let’s say you offer Facebook advertising training. Facebook rolls out a massive number of changes. You can write a blog post outlining these changes and wrap up by either an invitation to work with you one-on-one to help navigate the changes, attend a free webinar you’re giving on the changes or steer them to a Facebook training program you offer that has been updated to take these changes into account.
Method 7: Tackle Objections
What are the different objections people have when it comes to purchases your products or services? You can create valuable content that refutes one of these objections in a way that creates attention and interest. For example, you can provide a case study demonstrating real results.
Method 8: Go Beneath the Surface and Share Insight
If your products and/or services offer solutions of some kinds, there are typically various issues at the root of the problems your buyers face. If you’re able to show people that although they think their problems are caused by A, B and C, but in fact they aren’t and are caused by X, Y and Z, you’ll be offering them valuable insight.
Method 9: Curate the Best
One fabulous way to add value to your content is to curate the best resources you come across on a topic. Don’t just put a random list of links together! You’ll want to only source the best and also include some personal comments on each link.
Curation can serve as an additional traffic driver and source of inbound links. You can contact the authors of the content you are linking to once your content is live. Often they’ll be delighted and, in some cases, may mention that you included their content.
Start By Conducting an Honest Self-Assessment
Now that I’ve given you some ideas on how to create content that is rich in value, I want you to take some time to do a totally honest self-assessment.
Gather up the free content you’ve put out there over the past 3-6 months. Go through each piece as if you were a prospect and ask these questions:
- Does your audience offer value (based on one or more of the examples I’ve laid out)?
- Will readers, listeners, viewers be illuminated or enriched?
- Does it encourage people to take action and/or engage?
- Does it add to your credibility as an authority?
Review the 9 ideas I’ve offered and see how they can fit into your content calendar moving forward.
Coming Up
If you enjoyed this post, I’d love for you to check out the free live training I am offering “How Free is Sabotaging Your Success”. Once you register for it, you’ll be able to get information about my Converting Free to Paid training program.
What did you think of the 9 ideas? Do you have others to add? Please leave a comment below!
