Home > Resources by Kev > Articles
A List of Ingredients Isn't Enough
Why Many HOW TO Resources Fail to Deliver
© 2005 By Kevin Wirth - all rights reserved worldwide
Word Count: 1850
Updated 01/31/05
Ever had something like this happen to you?
You say “Honey – where are my glasses?”
Your spouse says “You don’t need your glasses”
Ahem.
You asked “where is it?” and your spouse said you don’t need it. Was your question answered?
It all depends on who you ask, I suppose… ;>) But in this conversation, there IS a disconnect. The answer doesn’t really provide the information that was hoped for.
A similar but much more serious disconnect currently exists online within many products that are being promoted with a promised answer to the question “How do I…?” but instead say only “Here are the ingredients you need”.
Come again?
When someone asks you for a cake recipe, it’s not enough to give them a list of ingredients like flour, milk, baking soda, and eggs – you also need to give them directions on how to mix it all together, what temperature to cook it at, and etc. A list of ingredients is only HALF a recipe. And oh yeah – none of that matters if the recipe doesn’t produce a cake that tastes good!
You better believe that Betty Crocker never sold a box of cake mix that didn't include directions on how to prepare the ingredients.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of half-baked "How To" recipes floating around on the internet these days. They claim to show you how to do this or that. Some of them live up to their claim – but many others simply do not. And that's because some of them only provide the ingredients without adequate directions.
When some of us run into a HOW TO resource with just the ingredients, sometimes it’s difficult to put your finger on exactly what’s wrong. After all, the person creating the “How To” guide is supposed to be an expert on the subject they are giving you advice about. All the right ‘ingredients’ seem to be there – but you get the sense that something is missing.
If the guide doesn’t provide an ordered sequence of directions explaining how to use the “tips”, materials, or other ingredients – then it lacks the information needed to achieve what it purports to 'help' you accomplish.
Are you with me so far?
To make matters even worse, many “How To” resources are being promoted by respected and reputable affiliate marketers who, though often well-meaning, seem to be more interested in making a commission than they are intent on evaluating how well the product actually works.
Another example…
If you produce a “How To” ebook that purports to teach someone how to paint, and all you do is provide them with a list of the types of brushes they need, plus tips on how to stretch a canvas, or mix paint – will they learn how to paint anything from you?
Nope.
The reason I’m writing about this is because if YOU are thinking about writing a “How To” guide, then you need to understand the difference between the ingredients and telling someone HOW TO USE those ingredients in such a way that they can produce the results they are expecting. You can’t offer one without the other and call it a ‘blueprint’, a ‘process’ or a ‘step-by-step’ anything.
You also need to help your customers understand what is essential, and what’s not. It’s amazing to me how many published authors of “How To” guides fail to make these very basic but important distinctions.
You Need Both Ingredients AND Complete Instructions
For example, one of the most popular ebooks in circulation today claims to be a ‘step-by-step guide’ to putting your ezine together. I won’t mention the book title or say who the author is, because I don’t wish to be accused of slamming someone who I believe is a good person and who I also believe is unintentionally representing her book as being something it is not.
The fact remains that her book is NOT a step-by-step guide for writing an ezine. It's a good resource – even excellent – but it's not a step-by-step “blueprint" - it's a collection of tips. Which is just a glorified checklist of ingredients.
Don’t get me wrong - they are GOOD tips, for sure. Some of the best I’ve seen. But do they give me what I really need to put an ezine together? Not exactly.
It's like the difference between
1) a shopping list of all the possible materials needed to build a house versus
2) a plan for how to use the essential materials in the list to build a house.
Even if you provide instructions on how to use each item on the list of ‘ingredients’, you still haven’t created a complete “How To” guide. Remember, showing people how to mix paint is NOT the same thing as teaching them to paint. You can teach someone to install a furnace but that's NOT the same as showing them how to build a house. And you can show someone how to beat eggs but that's not the same thing as providing directions on how to bake a cake.
Let me put it another way…
If I wrote a book on “How to Build a House in 6 Days” and in it showed you how to put a roof together, how to install windows and doors, how to pour concrete, and how to tape wallboard – could you build a house when I was done?
If you had never built a house before - probably not.
Why? Because you’d be lacking the directions for how to integrate all those techniques.
Use a Phased Approach
Both the list of materials and a complete set of step-by-step directions are needed to learn HOW TO do almost anything. And, that list of materials does not have to include all of the POSSIBLE materials you could conceivably use to build a house. Does every house use brick AND siding? Do you need both a furnace AND a woodstove?
You don’t need to execute 300 steps to create an ezine – you only need maybe 30. 300 steps makes building an ezine seem like an incredibly impossible task to many would-be ezine builders. It would be far more practical to create an ordered sequence of "phases" for the ezine development, and assign certain tasks to those different phases. For example:
Phase I - Things to do before you begin (10 tasks)
Phase 2 - Creating Your Ezine (30 tasks)
Phase 3 - Tweaking Your Ezine (25 tips)
Phase 4 - Promoting your Ezine (20 tasks)
Next, when you create a “How To” resource, how do you really know if you’ve produced a quality product? What is the ultimate verification? I would say – if it has been tested by members of your target audience, and the audience can easily and effectively re-create the intended results, then it works. If a target audience cannot create the expected results, then your guide should be revised until it does.
Going back to the ezine author - if you’ve never created an ezine before, you would not know which of her 300 steps are essential and which are not. And in a dizzying array of hundreds of tips – many people would almost feel like giving up before they even start. What comes across in her guide is an incredibly overwhelming task instead of a process that is do-able. After reading her book, and spending considerable money on it, I can almost guarantee that many people would feel more discouraged about creating an ezine than before they purchased her guide. Talk about failed expectations!
When you don’t tell your customers what things are essential to get their ezine out the door and which ones can be worked on later, or if you don’t provide them with a distinction between the key steps and optional ones (all in a proven phased sequence), you are doing them a huge disservice. This is, after all, one of the key reasons why they purchased the guide in the first place. They come looking for directions, but they are being given a huge list of ingredients.
You can give someone all the wisdom, advice and tips they need to build a house or an ezine, but if you don’t give them a proven and reliable sequence to successfully execute the steps they must take, you have not helped them build it.
So, going back to my metaphor of building a house….
If you asked me to provide you with a guide on “How To Build Your Own House” and I came to your lot and deposited all the bricks, mortar, siding, windows, roofing material, studs, wallboard, nails and etc. that you needed, and then produced directions that told you how to install each of these items individually – would you be able to build your house (assuming you’ve never built one before)? Can you build a house if you know how to install a window or furnace? If you know how to tape wallboard? If you can build a chimney out of brick and mortar?
Of course not.
Knowing HOW TO do those things is not the same as knowing WHEN to do them. And having a list of tools and materials isn't the same as understanding HOW to use them. For that, you need a plan, a blueprint, and some solid DIRECTIONS.
So, when you create your “How To” product, be sure to consider the following:
- A ‘How To Do It’ guide should assume that your customer knows nothing (or at least tell them what knowledge your guide assumes they already have).
- Make sure you provide your customers with a COMPLETE set of step-by-step instructions for how to use any resources they may need to achieve your HOW TO objective.
- Make a distinction between the essentials and nice-to-haves
- Help your customer get to completion as quickly as possible
- Make sure you present your instructions in a logical, proven sequence that will result in replication of what you are helping them create or build.
- View your 'How To" guide as a project, and arrange all the steps into Phases if there are more than 20 steps.
- Show your customer the finished product first, and then show them how to build it – it always helps if they know what they’re aiming for (even better - give them choices between the ‘economy’ and ‘super-deluxe’ versions and tailor your list of materials and directions accordingly)
- Perhaps the most important thing you can do, once you’ve completed your guide, is give it to several people in your target audience who have never tried doing what your guide claims to help them do. If these people can’t create what you claim to help them accomplish, fix it until they can.
==============<<>>==============
If you’d like more help creating a quality “How To” guide for your customers, please consider getting your own copy of my free report “19 Elements of a Winning How To Resource”. You can get this report just for visiting my home page at www.kevs-korner.com
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=
Kevin Wirth is the owner of KEVS-KORNER ezine, a free online newsletter offering articles, tips, resources, and insight on over 150 different marketing tactics. He is bringing together a growing community where you can work with others to create and market products online. To discover how Kevin can help you grow your online business, and get a free gift just for visiting, please head on over to www.kevs-korner.com.
This article was first published on KEVS-KORNER January 31, 2005.
|
