I’ve talk to many people on this subject, and found that most vehemently stand on either one side or the other. One says that if they give away all that they know, they will never get any paying customers. The other side believes that giving away information and expertise is the ONLY way to get new customers these days.

Who’s right?

Well, I’m no fence-sitter. My opinion falls squarely on the side of “give it away”, and here’s why:

The Internet has changed EVERYTHING. Nowadays, people expect to get a certain amount of information and products for free – in fact they expect to get a lot for free – especially information. For those of us in the information business, that can be a tough pill to swallow – at first. But if you think about it, it is actually pretty liberating. Keep reading to see what I mean…

Publisher’s Weekly ran an article about the 2009 Book Expo America, where they interviewed Peter Balis, director of online sales at Wiley, and Brent Lewis, VP for digital and Internet at Harlequin. These executives shed light on how their companies have given away content as a way of generating revenue and increasing visibility for their brands, including some key advice about giving away content:

the key to giveaways is to have a business objective, to know why you are giving content away and to be clear about where the benefit is. Wiley has three rules: free must not cannibalize paid; free must not dilute the brand; and free must have a purpose, either to generate revenue or provide advertising and PR.

Lewis told two tales of authors giving away content, with different results. The author of The Truth About Cheating appeared on Oprah and the downloadable book was offered on Oprah.com (also via Amazon and Sony) for free for 24 hours. The e-book jumped to the top of the list, as did the print version and, after the 24 hours ended, the book continued to sell. In the second scenario, an author wanted to offer his book A World Wide Rave free on Kindle for one week. The downloads were significant, but the freebie hurt profits. Wiley concluded that a week was too long and the book lost momentum.

Harlequin, on the other hand, is giving away the store or, rather, just enough to make the consumer hungry for the rest of what it has for sale. Using its 60th anniversary as a marketing tool to recapture readers who were introduced to the brand as teenagers and most likely not aware that there are 16 separate lines, Harlequin, for all of 2009, is giving away free the first book in each series, both the print versions and downloadable e-books. And they want you to pass the content on to others.

In the final analysis, Publisher’s Weekly concluded that it was smart to give away content, as long as you held something back.

In other words, use free content to promote paid content. That’s not to say that your free content should be without quality or value. On the contrary, you must give away some value in order to leave prospects wanting more. So look at is as using good free content to promote better paid content.

But giving away content does more than just sell your other content. Providing free content helps your business in general. Take a look at these:

Top 5 Reasons Why It’s Smart To Give Away Content

1. Trust Building – different from brand building in that brand building is all about you – trust building is all about your prospect. It doesn’t happen over night, but after providing quality information on a topic for a time, readers will begin to trust what you’re saying. This is even more true if you commit to the conversation – meaning you’re not just pontificating on a subject, you’re taking questions – and criticism and considering them with professionalism. That builds trust which leads to:
2. Brand Building – everything you give away has your name, your logo, your contact information on it. The more people download it, read it or request it, the more they pass it around among their friends and peers – that builds your brand. The bigger your brand becomes, the more Google will like you – and that’s all we really want isn’t it?
   To quote a line from one of my favorite films – spoken by one of my favorite actors: “I never expected you to do so damn well! I figured you’d ring out in two weeks, bing bang it’s over, and we’re popular. In Washington, you don’t even need the Ten Commandments when you’re popular!” (Sen. Lillian DeHaven, played by the late, great, Anne Bancroft). Being popular in Google amounts to just about the same thing – build your brand and you’ll build your popularity. When a prospect is looking for an expert in your field – guess who they’ll find first. When you’re popular, prospects, journalist and other professionals will seek you out – you’re on your way to:
3. Establishing Thought Leadership – you know you’re a thought leader when people not only ask you how something works, but what you think about how it works… Your opinion matters, it has weight, you’re no longer just giving away content, now it is coupled with professional counsel. Once you’re a thought leader, everything else you do goes into:
4. Validating Expertise - they know who you are, you’re their “go-to” source when they need information and perspective, they take what you say as gold – abracadabra…you’re an expert in your field! Congrats, but its not just a diploma to hang on your wall – its a resume to take you all the way to:
5. Lead Generation – with all that work behind you and your name, the leads we’re now talking about aren’t cold leads…they are RED HOT LEADS. Because you’re already a known quantity. All that content – the information you were afraid at one time to just “give away” – has established you as THE ONE, or at least one of the tops ones. You’ll do less selling in this phase because of all your prep work.
   

It is natural to think twice about giving away your knowledge and expertise at first. But if you do it right, with a strategy and a goal, I think it is the smartest thing you can do. Our world is all about content. You simply cannot look at it from a place of scarcity, you must see it from a place of abundance. The information is out there – you can provide it and become one of the top “go-to” experts in your field, or you can let someone else have that role. It’s up to you.