There’s a local branch of a pretty popular restaurant chain—Not Your Average Joe’s—near my online marketing company’s headquarters in Gaithersburg, MD. The food is inventive and damn tasty, but if I had to bet, I’d say what keeps people coming back is something you get before you even order your food. I’m talking about the bread basket.
The bread itself is good, but what takes it over the top is the dipping sauce they bring you with it. Every once in a while, a member of the wait staff will refer to it as “crack” and warn you about its addictive nature.
If the crack-like nature of the Not Your Average Joe’s bread basket and dip is what keeps customers coming back for more, one might think they keep that bread dip recipe behind lock and key.
But guess what? Joe himself posted the recipe on the company’s blog nearly three years ago.
Why It Pays to Give Away Your Secret Sauce on Your Blog
I’ve written in the past about the importance of content for a high organic ranking and I provided some tips for how to create great content for your website. Shortly after the post went live, I received a flurry of emails from business owners concerned that if they give too much information away on their websites (in the name of great content), they’ll lose potential customers.
Their arguments are that visitors will take the information (tips, etc.) and do the work on their own. They fear the do-it-yourselfers out there.
My response:
You’re not in business to serve everyone!
If you want more customers, give everything you know away for free.
And you should do this early and do it often!
Will some of the visitors you attract read your nuggets of wisdom and do things on their own?
Of course!
But guess what?
These folks weren’t going to hire you anyway!
Every small business owner has had an experience with the prospective client who asks you 50 million different questions, invites you out to give a presentation (maybe two or three), asks for a (detailed) proposal and then never returns your follow-up calls.
If, in the rare event, you make contact with them in the future, you usually find out that they took your ideas/presentation and did the work on their own (usually executing in a sub-optimal way and maybe even complaining to you about it – like it’s your fault!).
When you give content (knowledge, expertise, tips) away for free, you’re not trying to get these types of people to buy.
Blogging FAQ: Why Should I Give My Knowledge Away for Free?
- For successful business people, time is their most precious resource.
Depending on what stage of business you’re in, you probably don’t want customers who can afford to learn what you do in enough detail that they would even attempt to try to do it on their own. Even if they can learn what you know relatively quickly or easily, execution is everything! Your experience and authority in your field is much more valuable than a list of steps.
- The people who are going to hire you are going to be successful people who find your blog or website because you’ve given so much information away for free.
The enormous amount of information on your site/blog will quickly establish you as an expert. Successful people like working with experts. If they’ve found your blog or website, they have a problem. If you have great content on your site, they’ll see you as an expert who can help them solve their problem. A lot of the information on your blog or site might even convince them that there’s no way they have time to learn all that you know – better to just give you a call or drop you an email and see how much you charge!
- By giving away valuable information, you’re building trust with potential customers.
When a customer invests in your services, they are putting their trust in you and your business. Not only are you establishing authority in your field by demonstrating your knowledge, you are also providing content that is valuable to those who receive it. This shows the prospective client that you have something even more beneficial than information: you have experience applying that information.
The takeaway – if you want more customers, give your knowledge away for free.
Don’t worry about the do-it-yourselfers. You’re not trying to attract or sell to them.
Need additional reinforcement? Find the author of a book on anything business and ask them if they’ve lost more businesses than they’ve gained by writing their book. Or think back to my Not Your Average Joe’s example from above. Do you think knowing the restaurant’s bread dip recipe has prevented me or anyone else from continuing to go back for more? Twenty three locations and growing probably suggests not!
Need Help Blogging for Your Small Business?
If you don’t have time to share your invaluable information with the world, let us help! At Blue Corona, we can help you write blogs and build pages that demonstrate your knowledge and allow you to establish authority in your field.
Check out our case studies to see how we can enhance your online presence!