Promote Your Blog – How to Write a Great “How-to Article”

One of the keys to a great “promote your blog” strategy is to make sure there’s actually something to read when I get there. It’s more than just a weblog of your recent restaurant mishaps and office politics. It’s about education-based marketing and helping people make better decisions and guiding them to make good choices.

I would recommend a “how-to” article strategy. How-to articles are designed to help people learn a mechanism. This is the step by step information that shows a reader how to do an important task and also tells them what they get when they do that.

Here are my top 5 ways to write a great “how-to” article.

1. Start with what the problem is that your article will solve.  Many people do not know they even have a problem so you need to spell it out.  Obviously the solution will be in the article itself but until you state a problem who would go out of their way to read the solution?
2. A couple of intro paragraphs should be enough and included with the problem you’ll need to give a quick compelling reason for someone to read further.  That reason is the benefit they’ll get by reading it.  For example the reason to read this article stated above to be “a good promote your blog” strategy.
3. Use bullet points to help people scan the article easily.  Leave tons of white space as well. Each bullet point should talk about the “how-to” and also the benefit of that “how-to”. The benefit to this bullet point is allowing people to easily read by scanning.
4. Your information that you deliver should be based on experience only.  Why? Because, if you have to research your topic you really don’t have the right to talk about it.  Do you?  Writing from experience means that you’re giving people not only solutions but you actually have proof that it works. Also, it takes a lot less time to write from experience than having to do research then write it.
5. Finally, the main reason to use “how-to” articles as a promotion for your blog strategy is that good information helps you build trust, credibility, and respect.  People do business with leaders.  And, leaders are people that without being asked, step out of their comfort zone and lead by disseminating information.

The overall purpose of your blog is to build a body of information that is valuable to others.  How-to articles are only one way to do this but I think one of the best ways.

Good luck with your promote your blog strategy.