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How-To Article
By
Carl Friesen CMC
Chief Associate, emersongroup
Pre-publication Version 2010
In thinking of the theme for an article, many business professionals want to write about what they do for a living. It’s interesting to them – why not to the readers of the publication?
Don’t do it. Your clients and readers are mostly interested in results they can use; they don’t want to know how you do it. That’s what they hire you for – your expertise, so they don’t have to learn about it. Also, do you want to give away your trade secrets?
But what journalists call a “how-to” article does have its place in helping demonstrate thoughtleadership.
As an example, consider a former client of mine, a trustee in bankruptcy. His job was to help companies in financial difficulties to either close themselves down, or survive what might be a corporate near-death experience. He’d written a long, comprehensive article about how to go through the bankruptcy process. My advice to him was to not try to get the article published as it was. Rather, I suggested that he rewrite it to focus on a specific aspect of bankruptcy – the need to keep lines of communication open to creditors, suppliers, employees and other stakeholders. The result was an article that was genuinely useful and presented my client as the informed, caring person that he is.
The point is that to be useful in communicating the message you want, a how-to must be on a topic that the readers (current and prospective clients) want to know about and on which they themselves can take action.
One kind of how-to article that meets this criterion is the “how-to-work-with” article. It talks about how to get best value from a business professional. For example, an article that describes the value of bringing in a consulting archaeologist early into plans for developing a property fits this category. In such an article it can be explained doing so allows major problems to be identified before a lot of work has been done on the site. This may end up saving the developer a lot of money, not to mention headaches. This kind of info is the right kind of info for readers to know.Carl Friesen, MBA, CMC, is an Associate with emerson consulting group inc., a company that helps people with expertise to offer become recognized as thoughtleaders. He has an undergraduate degree in Geography from Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada; a graduate degree in Journalism from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada and an MBA from the University of Toronto in Toronto, Canada. Since 1992, he has helped build to media profile of many professionals in accounting, actuarial science, architecture, consulting, engineering, environmental sciences, law and other professions. His focus is in helping clients author and publish informative articles in magazines read by potential clients. He has also helped clients publish informative books. He is author of many articles on the marketing of professional services, has given over 40 presentations throughout the United States and Canada, and is author of two books himself: “The Fame Game,” published by the Society for Marketing Professional Services of Alexandria VA, and “Writing Magazine Articles,” published through Xlibris of Philadelphia PA. He is based in Mississauga, Canada, he can be reached at tel. 289.232.4057; .