“They can put a man on the moon, but…”
Jerry Seinfeld did a comedy routine in the 1980s about how Neil Armstrong landing on the moon was the worst thing to ever happen, because it gave ammo to every dissatisfied and griping person on earth.
Well, I feel like we’re in a similar moment today. Just yesterday I read a prediction by four smart and informed people called “AI 2027.” It says we will have superhuman artificial intelligence in the next two years.
“They are gonna put superhuman artificial intelligence on my stupid iPhone, but…”
… people still have problems today, big and small.
That’s a part of the reason why I feel that how-to content, mocked for years by Internet marketing thought leaders, is making a comeback.
(By the way, everything I’ve just told you above is a “problem-solution” lead, which is a good way to “pace” your reader in your how-to content, and set up the actual tips you have to share. As for that:)
#1. Absolute best case: Offer a new solution
How-to content offers solutions to people’s problems. People have problems not because they are incompetent and hapless morons. Instead, they have problems because what they’ve tried before hasn’t worked.
So the absolute best how-to solution you can offer them is something new.
Example:
A few years ago I wrote about a trick I had found made me motivated and eager to get to work.
Basically, before getting to work, I’d set a timer for 7 minutes and just sit, without allowing myself to do anything but sit. When the seven minutes was up, I’d be raring to get to work simply because my mind had been so impatient and was looking for some outlet.
(I’ve since started calling this Boredom Therapy and I still highly recommend it.)
When I wrote an email about this 7-minute pre-work trick, I got a record number of people replying and saying, “This is so cool! I gotta try it!”
People are always looking for ways to be more productive or, rather, less unproductive. They’ve heard about goal setting and Pomodoro technique and eliminating distractions. They have either tried them (“didn’t work”) or they’ve dismissed them (“couldn’t work because I heard it before”).
But offer them something new, and neither of those objections holds.
Offering a genuinely new solution is valuable in the age of ChatGPT, because by design, ChatGPT contains at best yesterday’s solutions that it learned from yesterday’s how-to articles.
The trouble is, there’s only so much new stuff, and even less new stuff that actually works. What then?
#2. Next-best case: Offer a solution that’s worked for you personally
In short, if you can’t write a new “How to” solution, write a “How I” case study.
It’s easy to suggest solutions when people have problems, and it’s even easier to dismiss such solutions. What’s impossible to dismiss is a fact-packed personal case study of how you solved a problem in your own instance.
Example:
Did you see what I did in that point 1 above, about a new solution? The fact is, “offer a new solution” is hardly new advice for in how-to content. So imagine that I’d just written the “how-to” part of that section, without including the personal case study of my boredom therapy email.
I feel, and maybe you will agree with me, that it would have made that section much easier to shrug off, and might even have made it sound preachy and annoying (“Oh yeah Bejako? Where am I supposed to get a new solution you donkey?”)
A how-to solution backed by your own case study is valuable in the age of ChatGPT because, while the solution is not new, the case study is. It therefore makes your content both unique and credible. On the other hand, default ChatGPT how-to advice is, once again by design, generic, anonymous, and therefore at least a bit suspect.
#3. Not-quite-best case: Sell the hell out of an old hat
If you got nothing new AND you don’t have a personal case study to share, then you’re left with familiar, well-trodden, old-hat solutions.
At this point, you’re not really in the information-sharing how-to business any more. Rather, you’re in the inspiration and motivation business.
Example:
In my Simple Money Emails course, I spend about a page’s worth of copy in the introduction to warn people against dismissing ideas in the course they might be familiar with.
That’s because later in the course I will suggest such tame breakthroughs as “make sure the opening of your email supports the offer you are selling.”
My customers might be tempted to shrug this off, and so I sell them on it, in advance — by acknowledging it might sound basic but highlighting how valuable it has been to me and other successful marketers, and how long it took me to actually internalize it, and how many people, including well-paid copywriters, actually don’t follow it.
Inspiring and motivating people will remain valuable in the age of ChatGPT because — well, who knows if it will remain valuable.
I’ve actually found ChatGPT to do a pretty good job inspiring me and motivating me.
But I still think humans have the edge here, simply because of our own pro-human, anti-machine embodimentism (a word I just made up to mirror racism and speciesism). I predict that will continue to hold, at least until 2027.
By the way, it’s good to keep your how-to articles to no more and no less than three points. I have more tips to share on writing how-to content in the age of ChatGPT, but I won’t.
Instead, let me tie this all into my promotion of Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin, which I’m bringing to an end tomorrow.
If you think back to my point 1 above, about how there’s not a lot of new stuff out there, and even less new stuff that works… well, that’s because most of the new stuff that works is inside Travis’s Royalty Ronin membership, and the bonus courses he gives away to members.
Over the past five years, I’ve seen dozens of people build 6- and 7-figure coaching businesses by reselling and repackaging ideas that Travis was sharing back in 2018 and 2019.
But Travis hasn’t been sittin’ pretty in the meantime. He keeps creating and innovating new ideas, ones that actually make money for him and for others who know of them and put them to use.
You can know of these if you look inside Royalty Ronin. And maybe you can be inspired and motivated by the other people inside the community to actually put some of these ideas to use.
I’ve been promoting Royalty Ronin for 2 weeks now. I will end my promotion tomorrow, Sunday, April 6, at 12 midnight PST.
I will certainly promote Royalty Ronin again in the future, maybe even every month. So you might wonder what exactly this Sunday deadline means.
I have been giving a bonus bundle to people who signed up for a week’s free trial of Ronin. After Sunday, this bonus bundle will go away, or rather, it will go behind the paywall. I will no longer give it to people who do the free trial, but who end up signing up and paying for Ronin.
If you’d like to kick off a week’s free trial to Ronin before the trial bonuses disappear, you can do that at the following link:
P.S. My bonus bundle, which I have decided to call the “Lone Wolf and Cub” bonus bundle, to go with the “Ronin” theme, currently includes the following:
1. My Heart of Hearts training, about how to discover what people in your audience really want, so you can better know what to offer them + how to present it.
2. A short-term fix if your offer has low perceived value right now. Don’t discount. Sell for full price, by using the strategy I’ve described here.
3. Inspiration & Engagement. A recording of my presentation for Brian Kurtz’s $2k/year Titans XL mastermind.
I say “currently includes” because I will probably add more bonuses to this bundle, once I remove it as a bonus for the Ronin free trial and make it a bonus for actual Ronin subscription.
But if you sign up for trial now and decide to stick with Ronin (or you’ve already joined based on my recommendation), I’ll get you the extra bonuses automatically in the course area.