This is a guest post by Tommy Walker, host of?Inside The Mind.
The ?How To? article is suffocating the blogosphere.
One look at Google explains why: ?How To? returns nearly 13 BILLION results.
In the past hour Google reports 55,100 results & Twitter shows ?How to? updating at nearly 200 results/minute.
?How to? has saturated the internet.
?How To? with it?s Wal-mart instruction manual voice is sucking the life out of your blog. It restrains your personality by limiting you to ?step by step? and invites conversation only from the clueless and contrarian.
Yes, ?How to? is essential to a blogger?s toolbox, but as a tool, it is misunderstood. ?How to? is most effective as search engine bait for trend spotters and The Established.
If you don?t have a large following and you?re not the first to publish the ?How to?, you?re wasting your time.
In this article, I aim to break you of the mindset that the ?How to? article alone will establish you as an authority or a thought leader.
I want to encourage you to use your voice and find strength in your stories, because that?s what the social web should be all about right?
To break the stranglehold the ?How To? Article has placed on the internet, I?m going to break this up into two sections.
- Showing your Personality While Remaining Informative.
- Alternatives to the How To Article.
First ? let?s get this out of the way, the ?How to? article is a crutch. ?We use it on days we don?t particularly feel like writing with emotion.
The problem is ? it?s everywhere.
The ?How to? and it?s instructable nature has assimilated a large percentage of the blogosphere into an amorphous blogger borg. ( At least, it?s the only way I rationalize why so many blogs sound exactly the same -but I digress.)
Part 1 ? Showing Your Personality While Remaining Informative.
When a blogger writes a ?how to? article, their intentions are good.
You share the steps so readers can share your sense of accomplishment.
Got a bunch of comments? Write a ?How To.? Learned a new Twitter strategy? Write a ?How To??
But if you?re only sharing steps you lose the context and motivation that -more often than not ? is the reason why anything worked in the first place.
Your readers have the directions, sure, but they?re lacking purpose. They?re missing the why & that ?why? is not always self evident for most people.
For Example: let?s consider ?How to Get More Twitter Followers.? If you have specific goals for growing your own following, this article is a FANTASTIC resource. But even the very first paragraph say
?I?m not going to get into why you might want to get more followers on Twitter, maybe you want to increase your traffic or because it represents more business opportunities? I?ll leave that to you.?
Unfortunately, if you were to ask most people WHY they would want more Twitter followers, you might be met with something like
?
It?s not uncommon, and nobody?s at fault. Just remember that most people are in love with the benefits but don?t understand the process
And 9 times out of 10, the process begins well before ?step 1?
What To Do Instead.
Instead of writing a straight ?How To? ? tell a story.
DIY blogs ? in my opinion ? do this best. Many of them don?t just tell the story about what they?re working on, but give you a real personal look into personalities.
In this ?How to redu outdoor furniture? tutorial, Jaderbomb shares how she gave new life to hand me down furniture. But before she gets into the ?How To? she starts with?
?OK! So I just had to share this with all my jaderbugs because it is so fantastic!!! I totally had this old chair from my mom and this little dingy outdoor table from a friend and they have been ?hidden? for quite some time because they were {not pretty to look at}?.?
Seriously, Who can?t relate to that?
Does this article show up anywhere within the first 10 pages of Google? No ? the top two spots are taken up by a Youtube video and Discovery.com
And let?s be real ? there?s no competing with either of these sites on an SEO front, so Jaderbomb does the next best thing which is being well, human.
Which sounds more exciting? The quote from above or?
?There are so many ways to restore or reclaim old ugly furniture. Whether you have furniture hand me downs that need work, or have found a beat up piece of furniture with good bones in the thrift store, here are some great transformations to inspire you.?
If you picked # 1 it?s because you?re not a robot. Excerpt # 2 uses that borg speak I was talking about earlier.
If you structure a blog post with the ?telling a story like a human being? format, it would look something like this:
- Presentation of problem
- tutorial
- resolution or?
- failure and what you learned from it
Telling the story with the problem first instantly humanizes the ?How to? and gives your readers something ?they can relate to. It also allows them to appreciate the process and lets you to be imperfect.
If you?re sharing your failures & shortcomings along with your successes, you give your readers someone real to relate to and someone whose story is worth following.
Let?s consider the ?How to get more Twitter followers? example again, but following the storytelling format.
How I got my first 2,000 followers on Twitter.
Early on in my career, I didn?t have any followers on Twitter. I knew that if potential clients were going to take me seriously as a consultant, I would have to have a respectable following of my own.
From my research, I noticed people with 2,000 followers seemed to be taken more seriously, and so my goal was to amass 2k followers in the first 2 months.
You may think this was no easy task, neither did I, but I was shocked when I was able to reach my target within 6 weeks and grow even further and faster than I could have imagined.
This is what I did?
Part 2 ? Alternatives to the How To Article.
So at this point you may be thinking, ?You didn?t really kill the ?How to? you just gave it a different opening.? ? and you would be right.
Like I said in the beginning, the ?How to? article alone isn?t going to make your career.
Infusing your real personality ? anger, elation, sadness, confusion ? and bringing people along for a journey will.
The first half of this article was about infusing your personality and journey to remove the stiffness from the ?How To? article
Part 2 will be about applying that to other (ab)used blog topics so that you ? and your readers ? can develop a deeper relationship while still working towards a business-like goal.
Let?s begin.
Book Reviews
It seems like every ?blog post idea? article you read, somewhere in there they?ll say ?review the book of an author who uses social media, then tweet them the link.?
While this is pretty good advice ? most ?socially active? authors are going to put the most mental stock into their book around launch, because that?s when they see the most sales. So if your review comes out a year (or more) since their last book, (depending on the author) you?ll be hard pressed to get more than a ?gee thanks? for your review.
However, if you start with a problem, your review becomes that much juicier
For example, lets say I?m considering redesigning my website and wanted it to be more modern.
If I were to ask Twitter (or Linkedin Answers, or Quora, or Reddit, or Yahoo Answers etc etc?) what the best books on modern web design philosophy were, I?d be sure to get a slew of answers. Some of them would agree with each other, and others may cause a heated debate.
That being the case, when I wrote the review, I would start the blog post talking about my problem (a site redesign) then tell the story of how I came to the book.
As I write the review, it?s from the perspective of how well the book helped me update my thinking on modern web design.
Doing this gives me a built in audience (the people who recommended the book), an angle to write the review from, and a built in distributer ( I would only publish reviews that speak highly of the original author)
Another way to approach the review is to analyze popular fiction with the angle of solving a problem.
Granted, drawing parallels and weaving in lessons may challenge you as a writer, but imagine not clicking on ?How 50 Shades of Grey helped me design a brand spankin? new website?
Round Ups
Margie Clayman is my favorite at this. At the time of this writing, her most recent is 100 People Who Don?t Get Enough Credit Online. Basically, create a large list and link to people who you think are awesome in a particular area.
Nothing wrong with this on it?s own and these types of posts generally attract a ton of traffic because everyone on the list goes out of their way to share it with their readers, especially if the micro reviews are flattering.
BUT what if? we approached it problem first?
An article like ?Want your website to convert 10,000% better? Hire these 50 web devs.?
This profiles web developers who are strong in a very specific area. ?Use the post to highlight their strengths and tell your readers that they should learn by following the new developer. Be sure to pats the developer on the back for something they clearly put a lot of time and effort into. ?Norcross is skilled in color theory and can intuit the best layouts to guide visitors into lead capture pages?
Hypothetical Posts
These posts are usually fun thought exercises like ?What if Google and Yahoo merged?? or ?What is the future of Marketing??
But what if you did a hypothetical post about someone else?s problem, and how it could potentially become your own?
What if Facebook collapsed? What would that mean for small businesses and bloggers?
What would a day without Google look like?
Using this problem based approach can turns the fun hypothetical angle into a serious and deep thought provoking discussion.
Discussion drives traffic. Traffic means business.
See where I?m going with this?
There are thousands of more angles we could talk about here, but the message remains the same.
Make it personal, make it about real problems and tell a real story. It may seem like we?ve come a long way from the ?How To? article, and that?s because so many problems aren?t always black and white.
?Being an authority? doesn?t mean you have to have all the answers, it?s about finding what works for you and giving the context around why it works.
This article may not work for you, and that?s ok ? your experience may not work for everyone. All you can hope for is to help other people who share your situation.
If you?re not the de facto expert, don?t try to ?fake it till you make it? by writing a ?How to? article like it?s the final word, just start with ?these are untested theories, but I?d love your help to make it work??
At the very least, you?ll be attracting people who are experimental and excited to take risks. Sure beats being secretly blamed when things don?t work right?
Really, this whole online game is a huge work in progress, and we?ve all got something to learn from each other. If you liked where this article is coming from, could you do two things for me?
- share this article with someone who you?d see get more personal. and
- leave a comment letting me know what other ways your personality could be weaved in (or if you disagree with me, let me know why)
Looking forward to your thoughts 
About Tommy Walker
Tommy Walker is the host of ?Inside The Mind? a show that will make you rethink all the ways you learn about Online Marketing Strategy. When he isn?t making plans for Season 2, he?s guest posting on every popular website known to man to raise $100,000 in 30 days via an experiment with crowdfunding.
Source: http://socialmouths.com/blog/2012/11/08/the-death-of-the-how-to-article/
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