What makes a guide worth your while? Is it quality content that drives engagement, or is it the average frequency of visitors you get to each page? What’s the difference between PPC ads and organic traffic anyways? Have you observed a rise in the number of individuals writing more in-depth guides? You know, the ones that are identical to my Quick Sprout tutorials on SEO, growth hacking, content marketing, and landing page optimization? For example, Vero just issued an email marketing guide, while Qualaroo recently released a conversion optimization guide. What you may not realize is that, although I was the one who popularized the construction of thorough guidelines, I wasn’t the first to think of the idea. The concept came from Moz, who published a beginner’s guide to SEO a few years ago.
When they published an article stating that the guide had gotten over a million visits to date, I decided to simplify the approach by releasing a new direction every month. Some of the principles only had 68,319 visits when I initially began off, while others garnered 128,582 visitors, but I soon learned what to do and what not to do. Since then, at least 361,494 people have visited all of my guides.
Building tutorials that attract thousands of visitors:
1. Write only on advanced subjects.
I discovered that if I published a tutorial on a subject that has previously been covered extensively or one that is simple, I had very few views. For example, the beginner’s guide to web marketing earned just 68,319 views. On the other hand, my growth hacking guide has already garnered over 414,209 views. I get at least a few hundred thousand visits every time I publish a focus on a complex subject. My blog follows the similar pattern. Whenever I write on a complex issue, my traffic skyrockets and provides extensive instructions. Primary blog entries, on the other hand, are notorious for failing. If you’re going to devote the time and effort to write a comprehensive guide, choose advanced subjects that are constantly gaining in popularity. Google Trends may be used to examine this. Simply type in a term or phrase related to the topic you want to write about, such as “growth hacking.”
If the graph is rapidly moving up and to the right, like in the diagram above, there’s a strong probability you’ll receive a lot of visitors if you write about that subject. You are now ready to select a writer after your advanced issue.
2. How do you locate writers?
If you’re a natural-born writer with the time to put out a comprehensive guide, that’s fantastic! If you don’t, you’ll need to hire someone to write for you. Browsing other blogs in your area is a great way to start looking for them. Look for well-known authors who receive a lot of social shares and comments on their posts. You don’t want a writer who writes as if he or she is composing an essay, therefore search for authors who write in a conversational tone. Consider posting a job on Upwork or Craigslist if it doesn’t work. You must be highly particular while seeking authors. You’ll be wasting your time sifting through a slew of candidates if you aren’t. The problematic issue is that if your job description is too lengthy, no one will read it, and we will just apply. The objective should be to strike a balance between length and detail.
The following are the essential points to include in your job posting:
- The material you want people to create is referred to as the subject matter.
- Length — Business postings should be between 1,500 and 5,000 words long, depending on your topic. Consumer-facing content should be around 1,000 words, preferably less than 2,000.
- Do you want your work to have a research-oriented tone, a casual tone, a conversational tone, or something else? Informal postings are usually the most successful.
- Send two examples of postings from your sector that you enjoyed. If you can’t locate any in your field, look for them in a similar area.
- You must express your purpose to prospective authors, whether you want your material to be comical or instructive.
Consider using an ad similar to this one when publishing an advertisement on Problogger or Craigslist:
ABC.com is searching for a writer who can write on sales/CRM/workplace motivation, company management, boosting income, and other topics.
MUST:
- Ability to communicate in a conversational tone
- Make posts that are educational.
- Possess a friendly writing style
Here are two examples of articles written in the manner we’re looking for:
- example1.com
- example2.com
We’re looking for blog pieces that are between 1,500 and 2,000 words long.
Please provide at least two pieces that you believe represent the writing style we like. If you don’t have any but are confident in your ability to write in that tone, send a paragraph inside your email in that tone. You’ll get more than 100 candidates once your job listings go live. Simply make sure the posting goes up on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. Then, if you release it on a Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, you’ll typically get 15 to 20% fewer candidates.
3. What criteria do you use to assess writers?
You want to read their emails first now that you have a list of candidates. Don’t bother reading their samples if you spot grammatical or spelling issues in the emails. Instead, tick them off your to-do list. Why? They wouldn’t be detail-oriented while writing material for your blog if they weren’t diligent enough to double-check their emails.
Read the first few paragraphs of the samples provided by the candidates who have a well-written email. Look for the following in the first few paragraphs:
- The usage of the words “you” and “I” in a conversational tone.
- Personality – no one wants to read a boring article.
- Fluff is something that no one wants to read.
- Facts — If the writer is making assertions, he or she should include references to sources that support those statements.
- Short paragraphs should preferably be no more than 5 or 6 lines long.
- People will have a difficult time reading their posts if they aren’t properly structured.
- Images — every post should begin with a picture.
Go back and read the whole blog entries that they connected you to now that you’ve reduced down your selection of possibly eligible authors. Now you should look for:
- Subheadings make it simpler to read and skim through text.
- Also, making specific terms italicized and bolded throughout a piece makes it simpler to read.
- External links – postings with a large number of relevant external links are more likely to be shared on social media by the website owners to whom you are connecting.
- Pictures, audio, and video are all potent forms of media. Text reading isn’t for everyone. It’s a positive hint if the writer uses media throughout the article.
- Conclusion – bringing the piece to a close makes it simpler for readers to absorb the material.
- A question should be presented to the readers after the piece. This will help you boost the number of comments your articles generate.
Most authors won’t be able to fulfill all of these criteria. However, those who get an average of 80% or more are likely to do well.
4. Why should you compensate your writers?
As you may have observed, I didn’t include compensation in the job ad because each writer is prepared to work for a different fee. You will get few or no candidates if your number is too low. If you set your pricing too high, the quotations you get will be too costly as well. You may ask each writer what they will take if you don’t provide a fee. After that, you may bargain with them to lower their pricing. Expect to pay $100 to $200 for each post on average. I understand that this may seem to be costly, but excellent content is. If you spend less, you’ll notice that the quality isn’t as good. If you’re on a tight budget, hold off on purchasing material until you can afford it. However, don’t scrimp on the quality. It’s preferable to pay for one excellent blog article rather than ten bad ones.
5. Make sure your authors are producing quality material.
Request that your writer offer five to ten headline suggestions. You may then either alter the headlines or choose the one that appeals to you the best. Once you’ve selected what you want your writer to write about, ask them to draft an outline for you.
The following should be included in the outline:
- Introduction — the whole opening paragraph(s) should be written from start to finish.
- Body – They should make a bulleted list of the essential themes covered throughout the body.
- Ending — the conclusion should include a question for the audience.
If you don’t like the outline or any particular aspect of it, tell the writer and have him or her make changes until you are satisfied. You may then have the writer compose the piece once you’re happy. Provide additional thorough input on what you like and dislike when your writer has finished writing the essay. The goal of this procedure is for you to be so fussy with the writer that he or she learns what you like and don’t like. Without much input, the writer will eventually figure out what you want.
6. Select the appropriate photos.
If the writer has used photos, double-check that they are screenshots, royalty-free images, or bought ones. To put it another way, be sure you don’t get sued because you used the photographs. I’ve been in instances when authors utilized photos they weren’t permitted to use, and the text was published anyhow. We subsequently received a legal letter from stock photography sites like Getty Images, demanding that we take down the picture and compensate them for the image’s past usage. This has cost me thousands of dollars over the years, which is why I am so selective about which photographs may be used and which cannot.
7. Make “cornerstone” maps.
If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’ve undoubtedly realized that I like to go big.
This implies that I:
- long-form guidelines to construct
- incorporate a large number of graphics
- statistics should be included
- cover a lot of information and details that others may not.
To put it another way, I attempt to deliver as much value to my audience as possible. Keep in mind that although I don’t always hit the ball out of the park with each blog article or guide, I do try for a constant degree of detail. And this has been a critical factor in my long-term success. This is why I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to create “cornerstone” guidelines rather than the typical, run-of-the-mill pieces that are so frequent on the Internet.
Here are a few of the advantages of writing long-form, detailed content:
- better search engine ranks
- more excellent time spent on the job
- social media success
- a commanding position
Of course, you won’t have time to write five or more blogs like this every week (or even three). That’s why, rather than cranking out hundreds of lousy guides, I recommend at least considering trimming down your content and concentrating on developing fewer but higher-quality in-depth tutorials.
8. It isn’t always best to go for the longer route.
I’ve authored books ranging in length from 20,000 to 45,000 words. One thing I’ve seen is that guides with a word count of 20,000 to 30,000 words perform just as well as those with a word count of 45,000 words in terms of traffic. As a result, you’re probably better off paying for a 20,000-word book rather than a 45,000-word one in terms of cost. Through testing, I’ve discovered that the ideal amount of chapters for each guide is about 7. Having ten or even fourteen chapters won’t get you much additional traffic, if any at all. Making your guide into one or many large pages instead of seven chapters will often result in fewer long-term search engine traffic. Because they were organized as one significant page instead of being divided down into many parts, the instructions on doubling your traffic in 30 days and doubling your conversions in 30 days get 313 percent less search engine traffic than the other guides.
9. Don’t forget to enlist the help of specialists.
Twitter is one of the most important sources of traffic for these tutorials. Expert interviews are the simplest method to increase Twitter traffic, as I rapidly realized from a couple of my advisors. When you include industry experts throughout your guide, you’ll have a cause to contact them when it’s out, and they’ll be much more willing to tweet about it and promote it. You’ll also discover that other individuals in your field will be more inclined to promote it since it’ll be seen as credible because so many people in the industry are talking about it. My guides with expert round-ups garnered at least three times the Twitter traffic as those without.
It would be silly not to incorporate professional perspectives in a handbook that has taken hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars to create.
10. Spend a lot of money on design.
I’ve learned from others that design isn’t something you can take for granted. Hundreds, if not thousands, of other websites published thorough guidelines before Moz, but Moz was the first to provide a complete guide in a visually appealing manner. Just on the beginner’s guide to SEO, they spent almost $20,000 on design. When I looked at the competition, I saw that the visually appealing principles received more social shares. This is why at Quick Sprout, I put so much emphasis on design. You may filter through illustrators on sites like Dribbble and locate folks who can make your guidelines appear great. On average, a really skilled designer will cost $10,000 to $20,000 per guide, while a competent designer would cost $2,500 to $5,000.
11. File types are essential.
You’ll need to find someone to code your guide once it’s finished. You’ll want to make an HTML version that you can post on the Internet. People will be able to link to it and share it, increasing your search traffic. Furthermore, I strongly advise you to generate a PDF version suitable for mobile devices and tablets. I didn’t do this with my previous two manuals, and I had over 300 emails from customers seeking a PDF version or making the book suitable with their mobile devices.
12. Incorporate infographics into your content strategy.
By pointing out the significance of infographics, I feel a little like Captain Obvious. However, the central fact is that this medium will get you a lot of visitors. Why? It’s straightforward. Infographics are often shared. “Infographics are 3x more liked and shared on social media than other material,” according to the study.
Here are a few more statistics that demonstrate infographics’ ability to drive traffic:
They’re visual. They’re simple to understand. They also make complicated material that would be difficult to ingest in a typical text-based manner relatively easy to swallow. They’re also entertaining. Infographics have a whimsical quality to them that makes people want to “eat ’em up.” Check out how many times this infographic from Copyblogger has been shared since it was first published in 2012:
It’s rather impressive. I’m aware that there are newer, sexier content marketing strategies out there. I’m also mindful that the popularity of infographics has declined in recent years. However, in terms of traffic-generating potential, they remain one of the most popular types of material. As a result, I propose integrating infographics in your manuals.
13. Make yourself at home with a video.
Here are some brief HubSpot statistics on the status of live video.
- “By 2019, Cisco estimates that worldwide Internet traffic from videos will account for 80% of all Internet traffic.”
- “Four times as many people would rather watch a product video than read about it.”
- “In 2016, 43% of customers said they wanted to see more video content.”
A continuous diet of video content will boost your traffic no matter how you slice it, so including a video or two in each of your tutorials is always a good idea.
14. Don’t forget to market your business.
Before you publish your guide, spend a few days reaching out to individuals in your business to let them know about it. This is significant because you may persuade them to promote the guide on social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn. It works wonderfully, despite its simplicity. I just send emails to individuals in my sector, stating:
Hello, [enter the first name of your contact],
I hope everything is going well for you and [insert the name of your contact’s company]. Because I know you’re busy, I’ll keep my email brief. I just wanted to let you know that I will be producing a free guide for our business that will educate everyone about [insert guide subject]. I’m doing this because I believe the sector might benefit from additional knowledge and I like assisting others. If you could tweet it or share it, it would be fantastic. The instructions may be found here: [insert hyperlink]
Cheers,
[put your name here]
Many individuals will disregard your email. However, around 5% to 10% of the individuals you contact will promote your advice. This will have a cascading effect, as more people will notice it and enable it.
Emailing the sites, you link to inside your content is another beautiful technique to advertise your guide. A solid rule of thumb is only to include external links when relevant to the reader. In general, you should aim for 25 external links for every 1,000 words of content you write. Why? Because I usually send out each of the sites I linked to with the following email:
Subject: In my most recent article, I referenced [insert their website name].
Hello, [put their name here].
I simply wanted to express my admiration for your work. I was taken with it to include a link to [insert their website] in my most recent blog article.
[Insert the URL of your blog article here]
I’d be grateful if you had a look. Please feel free to share it on social media. if you like it
Your fan,
[Insert your name here]
You’ll acquire social shares and ultimately build up a big enough following to market subsequent guides if you do it this way.
Conclusion
If you follow the methods above, you’ll begin to draw thousands more visitors to your site, produce more backlinks, and boost your brand’s awareness. One of my favorite ways to advertise a company is via guides, and it has shown to be highly beneficial for me since I follow the guidelines above. These manuals don’t have to take a lot of time or money to make. You may always write them internally or have them designed by your in-house designer. You should, however, be writing guidelines frequently. I aim to release at least one per month since they are so powerful.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you create a guide?
A: You can use the Guide button on your controller to create a guided tutorial.
How do you make an ultimate guide?
A: It is possible to create an ultimate guide using a few different methods. For example, you could use external sources such as forums and websites or internal resources like your knowledge of the game’s mechanics.