Giving content away for free: a difficult mindset

It’s not hard to give away free stuff. Once you get your mind around it, it’s actually pretty easy. What’s hard is overcoming the mindset that keeps us from giving away free stuff in the first place.

This notion of free knowledge is a relatively new one. It flies in the face of business history, which glorified staying mum, hoarding and protecting trade secrets, and never giving away anything for free. Ever. Historically, working for free was a sign of weakness. Not so anymore.

To build a business these days, is to build relationships. Consumers buy when they feel empowered: there are so many places to spend money, so they do business where they’re confident that the funds are going to a trustworthy source. This is where content marketing comes in: you are proving your knowledge and establishing your credibility in your field. If your readers agree with you, they will give you their business and tell their friends to do the same. This type of feedback is one of the key benefits of content marketing.

When you give away your for free, you are inviting a dialogue with your consumers. Communication is a valuable way to learn about your users and how they feel about your brand. Why pay for a focus group if you don’t have to?

One way to collect user insights is to enable commenting on your organization’s blog: after you give readers free tips on running webinars, for example, allow them to post their questions and comments on the topic and let the dialogue begin. Another, more implicit benefit of content marketing is that it establishes a culture of open communication: your reputation for transparency will encourage consumers to contact you with questions, concerns or ideas they may have that will help you make improvements. This collaboration between your organization and audience is what leads you to take better care of those consumers, donors and stakeholders.

There are many benefits to giving away content for free. Free content can establish you as an expert or authority figure, it can help broaden your reach and awareness of your organization (as people pass along your freebies), it can help increase sales or bring in new donors. But put all that aside and the bottom line is that sharing content is important because everyone else is doing it, and if you don’t, you’ll be left behind. You don’t have to give away trade secrets or your “best” stuff—but you do have to give away good stuff. Like we said, it’s hard to get your head around. But if you do, you’ll reap some interesting rewards. Really.