For those growing their business through content, we mainly think of how writing a book can help us reach readers outside of our network. But what about helping clients and those considering our services?
Creating a guide for prospective clients is great for that. Say you sell and customise a software suite that is useful for so many aspects of business — but the competitor marketplace is waffling on about complex features and functions. You can write or compile a guide that helps the business manager understand why the use of certain aspects are important and what results it may bring to their business (i.e. case studies).
Another angle is to write about your general solutions to the rising tide of customer expectations… through faster response, instant bookings, service agent chat auto messaging, web lead auto response, etc. (One I wrote was called How to Deliver a Sweet Customer Experience with your CRM).
In the guide, it adds proof to include a case study of how someone implemented your system. This helps to give external validation to the concepts you are talking about. Just leave out the usual pitch about your widget or service. It’s best to interview the person yourself to get more details and feelings about the outcome.
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Writing Styles
Apart from good grammar, there are few rules to follow when considering writing style.
- You can write like you speak.
- You can tell a real or made up story and place the reader right in your imagined scenario.
- You could pick a couple of similar characters who took different paths. I did this in How to Control your Financial Destiny, adding charts to enhance the message.
As long as you get your message across without jargon and avoid the personality-free, dull corporate style, your guide will have good bones. Then it’s onto copy editing, where an editor goes over the work to find any trouble spots. Things like: poor paragraph flow, change of voice, passive voice, and long sentences can all be helped with this editing. If you select an editor with experience in business materials, then your guide will be fine.
Want some help creating a guide?
An expert writer and editor, Jennifer can take your FAQs page, brochure, case studies, or other documents and turn them into a well-worded, awesome guide to place on your website for visitors to “opt in” to receive.
