How
to Write a Free Report That Gets Read and Acted on—Part
Two
By Mark Satterfield
All right, let’s talk about step two in the process—developing
content for your free report that both builds credibility
and makes your reader hungry to learn more.
As you might guess, the format and content of the report
will largely follow the title that you selected. If the
title is “Seven Mistakes HR Executives Make when Recruiting
Senior Executives,” then the content of the report
is pretty well defined.
Writing a report based on its title may seem to be a novel
way to develop content, but it’s the quickest way
I know of to get your report up and running. Remember that
you’ll want to produce your report as a PDF document
so if you want to change things down the road—that
shouldn’t be very difficult.
Step two in the process is to determine three to five points
of interest for each of the seven mistakes—or five
keys, or six ways—that you came up with for your title.
Outline the points under each key area. I typically start
with a bullet-point outline and then flesh it out.
So for each major component in your title, think about
the relevant points of interest that a reader would want
to know.
When I wrote the report “Gentle Rain,” the
original title was “6 Steps for Creating a Flood of
New Clients.” To develop the content, I simply bullet-pointed
the steps, fleshed out each one, and voilà, I was
pretty much done.
As in the earlier example, if you’ve got seven mistakes,
list them out in the beginning of the report. Then for each
one, briefly discuss what the mistake is. Share some insights
into how others have avoided it or solved it. Humanize it
by using examples and anecdotes about the mistakes. And
that brings me to a very important point.
People love stories. People remember stories.
For each mistake, tip, suggestion…whatever is on
your list…create a brief story that illustrates it.
Now I’ll admit that storytelling is something of an
art. While there are people who are naturally good storytellers,
I do believe it’s a skill that can be learned. I also
think that it’s a crucial skill if you’re going
to get your free information report read and acted upon.
Let me interject here about length. Just how long does
the report have to be? Actually it makes little difference
as long as it’s interesting. If it’s ho-hum…then
one page is too much.
Most reports end up being between five and seven pages.
However, I’ve done one-page check lists that worked
great, and on more than one occasion wrote a 150+ page book
that did an outstanding job. So length is secondary. Just
don’t forget the cardinal rule: Do not bore.
I’ve found that if readers finish a piece and think,
“I’ve learned something I didn’t know
before,” or “That was interesting”—then
you’ve accomplished the first part of your task.
However what we really want the reader to feel is satisfied
but incomplete.
By this I mean that we want them to feel good about the
time they invested in reading your special report, yet wanting
more. It should be a like a great book by a great author.
You can’t wait to read the author’s next one.
That’s the feeling we want our readers to have when
they put down our free report—satisfied, but still
hungry for more.
How do we do that? I’ll show you how in my next article.
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Mark Satterfield is a founding partner of Gentle
Rain Marketing and the creator of the Gentle Rain Marketing
System. He is also the author of five books, including Power
Prospecting: How to Gain Access to Key Decision Makers,
How
to Negotiate the Raise You Deserve, and
Career
Etiquette. Find out more about his services
at www.gentlerainmarketing.com.
See our other articles by Mark Satterfield:
How
to Create a Free Report That Actually Gets Read and Acted
On
How
to Write a Compelling Marketing Letter: Make Your Prospect
Take Action
How to Write
a Compelling Marketing Letter: The All Important First Sentence
Keeping
a Reader’s Attention
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