For the majority of people who use blogs and podcasts, they are giving away information for free. Most service based professional are concerned about this. They are afraid of giving away the farm and not getting any clients in return. In particular, they say:

“If I give away everything for free, then no one will pay me for anything.”

So, how do we reconcile giving people a sample of our expertise using online media for free and ensuring that people want to hire us for a fee?

Sean D’Souza (top left) shares a simple formula. In an article called Attracting Customers: How Much Should I Give Away? How Much Should I Keep?, D’Souza says you should give away ideas and sell the system. In particular, he says:

“These ideas grab our imagination. They make us want to buy more books by the author; visit the author’s website; and buy into what sort of system that author is selling. And that’s not even counting implementation.

When a customer gets powerful ideas, they not only want more ideas, but they also want you to help them get maximum mileage from those ideas. This invariably leads to additional consulting, more training and hah, even more purchases of products.”

Use your podcast and blog to give away ideas. In other words, answer the what and the why. For example:

• If you’re a professional organizer, write a blog post on why it’s important to stay organized in your business.
• If you’re a business coach, produce a podcast to explain what are business plans and why it’s important to keep one up to date.

If you give away great ideas answering the what and the why, prospects will be so jazzed that they’ll want to hire you for the system, in other words, the how. Keep this in mind when developing content for your blog and podcast.