The Anatomy of a Free Guide

I recently released my latest free guide, How to Become a Freelance Blogger.  I’ve made it available for download at no charge for my mailing list subscribers.  You can get your own copy here if you want.

Free reports, guides, or ebooks are a terrific way to get traffic and new subscribers.  A lot of bloggers use this technique but some are reluctant to do so, feel like they don’t have the time, or have simply never thought of it.  This is the third one I’ve released on any of my blogs and the previous two have been huge successes.  In this post I’ll discuss what qualities make up a great free resource.

Having a Purpose

The truth is that creating a valuable resource to give away does take time and effort, but the outcome is worth it as long as you have a goal in mind.  Without a measurable goal you might feel like you wasted your time.  Here are some goals that you might have.

Spreading the word – a free resource that goes viral and is shared among people on the internet can quickly get the word out about your blog or your business.

Build your personal brand – personal branding has gained a lot of buzz in the last year or two.  Writing a killer guide showcases your expertise and gets your name known.

Build your list – a valuable report or guide makes a great incentive to get people to sign up to your mailing list.

Make money – you can use a free resource as a way to capture leads and upsell paid products later on.

Qualities of Great Guides

I’ve read dozens of free reports and guides from all kinds of blogs over the years.  Sometimes I’ll read a report knowing full well that the topic itself doesn’t interest me, or that it is a lead up to a pitch for some products, simply to analyze how the report is structured and delivered and which marketing techniques are used.

In my experience a good free guide has these qualities:

Right size – it should be as long as it needs to be to deliver the message, and no longer.  I’ve read great ones that were only 4 pages long and great ones that are over a hundred pages long.  It is always obvious though when the writer is waffling on purely for the sake of page count.

Saves time – it doesn’t have to be original content, it just needs to be valuable content brought together in a way that saves the reader time if they had to go out and find all of that information themselves.

Actionable content – the reader should not get to the end of the report and think “Ok great” and get on with their day.  They should think “Ok what next?”, and your report should answer that question.  Make the content something they can act upon further.  One way to do this is to include a worksheet or step by step instructions that summarize the advice in the report.

The Contents Inside

Many of the free reports I’ve read have taken different approaches to their contents.  These can basically be summarised into these few types.

Collections – these are collections of related blog posts, edited together in a way that makes them flow slightly better or to cement their relevance to each other.  For example a travel blog might share its top 10 tips for comfortable long distance air travel.

Step by Step Guides – usually these are longer and more detailed than a single blog post would be.  Usually they teach a skill or help a person reach a desirable outcome.  These can also be made up of collections of blog posts like in the previous example, but work just as well when the contents are exclusive to the guide.  For example my Twitter/WordPress Integration Guide is made up of original material that hasn’t appeared on my blog, although it would be simple to break it down into multiple blog posts.

Teasers – these are the free reports that often precede a product launch or a sales pitch.  Usually the report will tell you the value of a skill or product, what you can achieve with it, and aim to sell you on the idea of buying their product or training course.  These types of reports have a lot more riding on them than a Bob’s Best BBQ Tips report, because the author is aiming to make sales and so has to use very effective copy and marketing to achieve that.  The report may also have a very short lifespan only leading up to the product launch and be useless after that.

In the coming weeks I’m going to publish a series of blog posts on how you can create your own free report, guide or ebook and use it to promote your blog and build your subscriber list.  Sign up to my RSS feed or mailing list at the top of the page so you don’t miss the next post in this series.

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