By Robert Middleton - Action Plan Marketing

Last week I gave you a big overview for a content strategy to market your Independent Professional business. 

Please don't ignore this strategy as it can be the most powerful and effective way to build relationships (meaning trust and credibility) and get more prospective clients to opt-in to your e-list to learn more about what you can do.

And it's only those who have raised their hand and said, "tell me more" that end up being clients. 

This strategy fits hand in glove with Marketing Ball. You get a prospect to first base when they visit your site and see a lot of juicy information that can help them. They read some of your articles on your blog and then they opt-in to your e-list. You now have their attention. 

The baseline between first and second includes information, familiarity and experience. If you push to the selling conversation (second base) or make a pitch too soon, you get struck out. 

Now that they are on your list, you don't send emails pitching your services. No, cool it. Instead, you give them more valuable information. 

Articles and Content are Keys to the Kingdom

Once a month (at the absolute minimum) you send them a juicy how-to article that will help them. Look, even better, you send it out twice a month or even weekly. And since 95% of the content of your emailings are real value to them, there's little resistance. 

And if you end up blogging more frequently, then at the top of your eZine, you put links to those blog posts. Perhaps you have a few guest bloggers. Well, link to that content as well. 

In short, much more sharing of valuable ideas and much less selling and pitching. There's too much of that already. I get emails once a day from some people and most of them are pitches for something. After awhile I just start to ignore the emails, don't you?

The thing I didn't talk about last week that I want to cover in depth today is how to create powerful, relevant content that people want to read in the first place. 

Isn't that the issue? 

Heck, if everyone could write without a lot of resistance, this would be easy. But it's not easy because everyone has so many preconceptions about writing. People can take half an hour just to write a sentence. 

That's not writing, that's torture!

Today I'm going to talk about a couple key things you need to do in order to produce useful articles with as little struggle and effort as possible. 

1. How to find topics for your articles

2. How to structure your articles

If you can handle these two, you'll be writing up a storm in no time. The first one is often a huge barrier in getting started, but it's really the easiest.

1. How to Find Topics for Your Articles 

Since I'm a fanatic about lists, of course, you start with a list. 

What you do is write a list of at least 100 questions that prospects or clients have asked about your area of expertise or areas where your clients have had problems. Questions and problems. As simple as that. 

And the only way to do this is to write FAST! 

Anybody can write a list like this in about 30 minutes. Just start with the first question or problem that pops into your head. Don't judge, don't sensor, don't wordsmith, don't fine tune, don't edit at this point. Just write. It will fill about 4 pages of a spiral-bound notebook, It you want to do it on a word processor, fine. 

Now you have 100 topics. If you wrote once a week for two years, that would be all you needed. Twice a month, four years; once a week, eight years. You may never have to write another topic!

OK, now take that list and rework it. Arrange it into similar topics, add to it, fine tune it, edit it. Turn those topics into "How-to Headlines." So if your topic is "performance reviews," the headline might be: 

"How Managers Can Conduct Performance Reviews That Actually Result in Increased Performance."

Not hard, right? Now you don't have to do this right away for all your topics. Just the first dozen or so. And that's from three to twelve month's worth of articles. Great start

2. How to Structure Your Articles

I can't tell you how much people over-think this. Remember, you are not writing a book or fine literature. You're just explaining, in 750 to 1000 words, how to do something that you already know how to do. You explain it in writing just as you'd explain it in person - conversationally. 

Here's a basic structure that is tried and true. I've been using this basic approach weekly for fifteen years:

a) Open up with a paragraph or two of a problem or issue. 

"Performance reviews aren't easy; everyone avoids them. They're so hard because…" One or two paragraphs that get you on the same page of where your reader is. Show them that you understand their pain and that you've been there. 

b) Talk about what's possible if that issue is resolved. 

"A great performance review doesn't need to be a chore, in fact it can be fun. Not only that, a correctly conducted performance review can inspire your employees to do better." Again, a few paragraphs that will motivate them to read the rest of your article to learn what to do. 

c) Give a list of five to ten things that will help solve that issue for them. 

You've seen me do this hundreds of times in this e-zine. In fact, I'm doing it in this e-zine right now! I'm simply sharing a list of things that work from my experience. You don't need to over-think this. Again, this is not a college thesis. 

d) Wrap things up and make a call-to-action. 

Give them some final words of wisdom and send them on their way. They now have some very useful, actionable information on this topic. This makes them feel good. This makes them think about you when they need help. This make them refer you to their friends and colleagues. 

So titles and structure is the starting point. My recommendation is to write your topic list today and then select one topic and write an article. 

Don't think about it - do it!

Next week we'll talk more about this. I want to give you enough tools and inspiration to get you developing powerful, practical and valuable content that will start to magnetically attract prospects to your business. 

Cheers, Robert