Tip Sheets – Great Free Publicity Online & Off
Tip sheets are essentially lists of a half dozen or so ‘tips’ that tell people how to do something or how to solve a problem. They are a great way to get free publicity. Traditional editors and reporters love them – they’re a ready to go piece that requires little to no extra work, and they cross into different formats (print, TV, radio, etc.) well because they can be used as short lists complete with bullet points.
Best of all, tip sheets are easy to write and can be pulled together relatively quickly. Everyone has seen a form of a Tip Sheet in traditional media: “8 Ways to Lose Weight Fast”, “Top 10 Biggest PR Blunders of All Time”, “6 Proven Tactics to Lower Your Energy Bills”, the list goes on.
For those of you who spend time on, or are at least familiar with, the various online social networks (as any modern PR person should be) those types of titles should look familiar. Go to the first page of Digg.com and at least two or three of the top posts will have titles similarly structured.
The ‘tip sheet’ tactic has crossed from traditional PR to new online mediums, except the online marketers and SEO types coined a new term for it: Link Bait.
Hey, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”…
5 Great Tips for Putting Together a Great Tip Sheet/Link Bait Title Article
- Use numbers in the title and try to work in words like ‘Best’ or ‘Top’ – the whole idea is to make it exciting and easy to digest.
- Be Concise. The first sentence should give the instructions, the second sentence should explain them – that’s it.
- Avoid promoting yourself or your client too much. The temptation is there, but people will not trust your advice if they feel they’ve been pitched to.
- Use ‘action language’. The tips should read like well-written instructions, start off with a verb whenever its possible.
- Make it short and sweet. Limit the whole thing to a page; you want there to be enough information to actually be of use, but people will not read through a huge laundry list: 5 to 12 tips is a good guideline.
Tags: free publicity, link bait, promotion, Social Media, tip sheets, tips
April 1st, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Number of ways, how to, and the secret to headlines also make for great link bait articles. Anything that gives the impression right away that the article will contain something to take action on will receive plenty of traffic, and bookmarks to follow.
April 9th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
Tip sheets are a great way to “give away” free pieces of information that are not too heavy to read and will be of value, hopefully to your potential markets and build trust in your expertise. If you give them away as part of an email autoresponder campaign, they’re easy to administer too!
June 7th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
Tip sheets, how-to articles and anything else that gives the impression that it will make life easier for the reader will attract attention. For website promoting, these are some of the best type of articles to write that will encourage readers to reprint your article on their site, which gives the site your promoting another link. Having pages like this on your website itself also helps to encourage visitors to check out your website.
Meridith
July 19th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
Thanks for the great tips, like your suggestions your article is very concise and to the point. I’m always looking for ways to get the public talking about and interested in my business and what I have to offer and I know this article will help.
August 25th, 2009 at 2:25 am
Thanks for these great ideas. Developing lists and bullet point topics are great to get reads and views. I also like your instruction to be concise. A lot of times people try to seem smart by going on and on about what they offer, but they really don’t say anything beneficial in the end.