Why you should give content away free (and ways to make it easier)

By the nature of a blog, you’re giving away a lot of information for free.  How can that possibly help your business — and how can you turn those visitors into paying customers?   Here are some ideas for creating free content while keeping the good stuff for those who pay.

It’s OK to give it away for free.  Free offers are a proven marketing strategy that convert readers into customers.

Leo Babauta of Zen Habits (which has more than 100,000 subscribers), says that he gave content away for a long time before being able to charge for his advice.  In his article “Why Giving Away Your Services For Free Will Get You Business,” he tells his own story about how he waited to build up his audience before asking people to pay anything — it took time and patience, but it eventually paid off.

The marketing site Hubspot.com, has lots of data and surveys about how free content actually helps sales.   Specifically using the word “free” gets people more involved with your content and your blog.

Here’s some ways to give away content for free:

1. More blog posts.

This is a given.  Since business blogs help improve your Web traffic, it’s worth blogging iust for that.  More content = more people at your blog = more chances they will buy or contract your services.

2. Repackage your content in a different way

Jane Hamill, a fashion designer business consultant, has a free report, “101 Ways to Run Your Fashion Design Business Like a Pro.”  She can repurpose almost every one of these tips into a blog post on its own, or re-write some of these tips for ezines.  Also, her free, “101 Ways” report is an introduction to her more advanced, detailed offerings.

3. Give your “beginner” offer for free, and charge for the “expert” offer

Problogger.com has a free course for beginning bloggers, and a Problogger Academy, where you can take individual courses for $30 each or four for $100.  This strategy makes sense.  Beginners don’t know what they don’t know.  A free beginning course will get them started and reveal where they need to improve.  If they liked your first product, a more advanced course/offering/e-book will help them fill in those gaps.

4. Give them a case study

Get specific — showing how you solved a certain problem for a certain client, does two things: 1) it shows your expertise and 2) it shows that there are no quick, cookie-cutter solutions to individual issues, whether your customer needs technical help, marketing help, or design help.

Jane does this as well in by taking customer questions & turning them into “Today’s Fashion Brain Question.”  Notice:  she doesn’t get too specific, but her expertise and personality shine through.