Stop Writing “How to” Guides, write about “What to Write”

Let’s start with an interesting image.

Surprisingly, “How to” articles have a clear edge over write-ups about love, as far as search results are concerned.
Why?

Because people love writing “how to’s” and it has become a tradition from trend.
Being the most overused topics for bloggers, I’m as guilty as anybody else; I know this, because each time I sit with my laptop, the blank screen stares at me, as though pleading, “Not another how-to article pleeeeeeease!!!

It’s like eating the same thing for breakfast, lunch and dinner, over and over again.”

The web is flooded with “how to guides”; bloggers and internet marketers are finding new problems and then solving them by writing “how to’s”, simply because these articles tend to do well in all major search engines as compared to other simpler articles.

The reason being simple; people tend to search this way.
Now the question is, to counter the overdose of “How-to’s”,

Convert a serious story into a comic one

We all follow several blogs, and few authority ones like Matt Cutt’s. When Google recently launched Penguin 2.0, everyone started covering news.

What if you made fun of it in a healthy way? Like writing a post with the title “Last night’s Penguin came home and stole my money” ; comic posts certainly have a better bounce rate and engage visitors well.

Write fearlessly about your experiences

Blogging is about writing what comes to your mind and knowing what interests your users. It doesn’t really matter that you write thousands of “how to’s”, all the while knowing that half of them are crap.

Try to write about your personal experiences like “How a client taught me about customer retention” or maybe “How I lost 3 million dollars in 2 days”.

Disagree with the experts and write why

We all make mistakes and even the experts admit that they were wrong at some point of time. If you believe in yourself and are 100% sure, then write a blog about disagreeing with the point.

There is every chance of a controversy being created, but that will put you in the limelight for sure!

Write about your work-related fantasy

Who says fantasies don’t work in the real world? Have we forgotten about Harry Potter? It’s all about the way you present it. You may be an extremely good SEO but you must have a fantasy.

As my fantasy is one day “I will hire Matt Cutt’s as link builder and make him do link exchanges”. :)

Write about surveys and case studies

Surveys and case studies are both excellent in terms of engaging visitors. So next time, try to write a visually appealing case study and see if it works. Case studies get the maximum amount of backlinks as compared to other type of content.

Write like you are giving a presentation on a stage

Talk to your audience as though they are seated in front of you and you are making a presentation in front of them(dress up in a suit or tux if it helps!).

Make your blog as interactive and fun, as you would make your presentation.
Freely write whatever comes to your mind and then edit it.
“If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.”
(Margaret Atwood)
Free writing is the best way to write, because that is when you put your heart and sole into your writing. Your personality gets reflected in your writing, which is critical.

So what if there are too many ideas running in your mind and you end up writing a haphazard 1000-word article; you can always edit it and remove about 700 to make it a great 300 word article in the end!.

Post contributed by Himanshu Saxena of TIIT Solutions. You Connect with him on Google+