The hate on "How-To" content (and what to post on social media instead)

Let's dig into the long-standing marketing debate over "how-to" content—why some experts say it “doesn’t sell” and others swear by giving away as much as possible. 

The truth lies somewhere in the middle. 

I'll share a “hot dog stand” analogy, that'll forever help. you remember how to choose how much value to give away for free online, while reserving your premium material for paying clients. 

If you’re a service-based entrepreneur struggling to strike this balance on social media, this episode has the clarity you need.

Value Isn’t Just ‘How-To’: Inspiration, entertainment, and unique behind-the-scenes glimpses all count as valuable for your audience.

Why Some Say “Don’t Post How-To”: Step-by-step guides alone don’t typically convert followers into clients. They need more than just instructions.

Hot Dog Stand Analogy: Don’t give away the hot dog; offer the relish, the factory tour, or the backstory. Provide valuable insight without sacrificing your paid expertise.

Marketing Psychology Still Matters: How-to content can be powerful, but you also need posts that address objections, share your story, and nurture audience trust.

Mindset Shift: Stop overthinking “value.” Think about what your audience finds genuinely helpful, and remember that value has many shapes—education, emotion, connection.

Check out the free training below, to see how Jenna’s Magic Marketing Machine program helps service providers master Instagram and run their accounts in under 15 minutes a day—without giving away the whole farm.

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Tap here to get your free Posts That Sell Template (This caption got us 10 sales calls in 3 hours)

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Music by Jordan Wood

Hosted by Jenna Harding (Warriner), Creator of Magic Marketing Machine

Transcript

Man, the marketers keep fighting. Guys, can we all just get along? If you haven't heard, for decades, there's been this constant fight, push pull,  over whether folks should post how to content or whatever. Not. So why can't we make up our minds? What's going on here?

  the same thing.

For the folks who say, don't post it. Yeah. Okay. You're right. How to content doesn't sell. It doesn't sell in and of itself. If you give someone a step by step manual on exactly how to do something, it makes perfect sense that they're not going to then turn around and pay you for that same manual that they just got for free.

Right? So how to content doesn't sell. But it's really powerful as part of your content strategy. It is a really powerful piece of your marketing initiatives. 

 In my humble opinion, I think the only reason that marketers argue about this is to confuse people who aren't marketers.  Could be, maybe not, who knows. But if you're a regular person, you're trying to do your marketing, okay, you have a business.  I assume you have a business and that's why you're here.

That's usually who listens to this podcast because my whole thing is teaching service based business owners how to get clients from Instagram  pretty much every episode of this show revolves around that in some way, some element of having a business, growing your business, mindset for business, yada, yada, yada.

So I'm assuming that's why you're here. So where folks like you often get confused is with this word value, because all the marketers and social media managers on the internet are telling you to give value, but not too much, but not too little, but not too much. And so, yeah, of course it's confusing,

, value, firstly, doesn't just need to be how to. That is, you know, a version of value, but value can also just be to entertain people. And if I can dig into that one for a second, you don't need to be goofy or silly like me to entertain people. , documentaries entertain people, The Nightly News entertains people, Sudoku puzzles entertain people, and those are not funny, goofy, silly.

 Value can mean a whole lot of things. Inspiring people, making people feel confident.

Getting a discourse going  where people can feel heard and sound off and let their opinions be known and have a conversation about it. All of these things are super valuable. It's not just how to, which is, you know, we can all get really tripped up about stuff like this.

So, why am I ranting about this particular topic this afternoon? Well, one of my clients came to me and they were confused about this. They had a business coach telling them not to give value And they themselves felt like they were holding out on their audience by not giving value and it didn't feel aligned for them to not give value.

So I have a rule when any of my clients come to me and They tell me something that their business coach or another expert that they're working with has told them I Assume by default that their business coach is excellent I don't think it serves anyone for me to assume that that business coach is full of it, right?

so if I'm assuming that their business coach is excellent and we know that Content marketing has to give some sort of value I'm betting that there's just confusion here over what? Constitutes value or they're trying to say don't just give value because a proper content strategy and messaging has like all these other very important ingredients in order to take a follower by the hand and move them toward a sale in a nice streamlined way, which is ideally what we're doing with all of your content, your blog, your podcast, your YouTube videos, your Instagram, whatever.

So, I'm assuming their business coach knows what's up, I know what's up, and there's just something that needs to be clarified in the middle here. And it is , at the end of the day,  a content marketing fundamental value. And I don't know about you,  but if I need to understand something, nothing does it quite like a ridiculous example.

So,  here is I'm going to play for you exactly And because when I coach my magic marketing machine students, they get to choose if they want to come to a live call or get video feedback. This person wanted a video feedback, so it's recorded. So I'm literally going to play for you exactly what I told them. 

 Which is a very ridiculous example of how to give value to your followers. without just giving away what you sell, all right?

At the end of the day, we're trying to figure out ways to give value without just giving away what you sell. Uh, so here you go. I edited it a little bit, but this is me recording an answer to my client explaining an answer to their question.









So you're, , in this limbo of like how much information to give away for free and what constitutes value and all of that. I'm here for it.   Experts, marketing experts for a long time have been like, arguing over  how much to give away for free. Some people are all about give away the farm, like give away as much as possible.

And the argument for that is like, nobody's gonna go through your entire social feed. And get everything they need from there and then not work with you because that's way too much work and it's piecemealed and it's not the same as actually working with you. So your ideal client. Isn't going to do that.

They just want to work with you. That's the argument for it. So then you win people, you like trigger the rule of reciprocity you've given to them. So then they owe you. So that's the argument for giving a lot away for free. The argument against giving a lot away for free is that how to content doesn't sell, right?

That's not nurturing. That's not reversing objections. That's not sending people to the next step. That's not,  identifying their problems and diagnosing them, like all of these things that marketing psychology does to make someone convert. It is not those things, right? How to content isn't those things.

So  if you have a hot dog stand and all you do is give away free hot dogs, logically. No one is going to pay you for a hot dog, right, if they're going to get one for free. 

So instead of giving away the whole hot dog, we give the relish. We host a relish making workshop. We teach people about hot dogs. We take them to the hot dog factory and show them behind the scenes, which is probably terrifying. We give them all sorts of value, stuff that could even be worth paying for, but we don't give away the hot dog.

 Okay,  I hope that helps and I also hope you're not a vegetarian.  You can give away a ton of value without, Cannibalizing. Your paid material. Alright? So, this, I'm not disagreeing with your business coach. I think that  all kind of probably saying the same thing. , and it's up to you to decide , what value you do want to give away, what that looks like for you, and finding a zone that you're comfortable in.

  All right, that's it. That, that, there's the clip. The old hot dog stand, the metaphor that teaches our students all they really need to know. No, but seriously, so much of the work that I do with small business owners is helping you figure out content that you can create that is super unique to you and not just kind of the recurring themes that we see in content.

How to content is great. An inspirational post on a backdrop. is great, but  how cool would it be to tour the hotdog factory? You know, what a neat idea that comes from brainstorming and comes from deeply understanding what value is and what your ideal clients want to see. So much goes into content strategy.

I am a total nerd for it. When I work with service providers in my program Magic Marketing Machine, you go through this, like, really deep, intense brainstorm that I have been, , perfecting over many years to help you break your brain free from everything that you think your social media Has to be and everything that you think that you're supposed to be posting or your industry is posting, you know, break free from all of that.

And that is how you become the standout online. That's how you start posting stuff that nobody else even thought of that again. It leads your client down a path towards working with you.  By the way, if you want to work with me, the doors to Magic Marketing Machine are wide open.

That's my program, where I help service based business owners get clients from Instagram. And all the things in between. Create content faster, spend less time on your phone, manage your account in 15 minutes a day, make amazing content, get more views, all of the numbers we want to see going up.

 If that piqued your interest,   if that sounds like something that you want for your business this year, there's even a free training in the show notes that'll show you the exact strategy that my clients use when they work with me and give you all the information about Magic Marketing Machine, how you can jump in and start growing your business with us.

With that, I will see you  probably next Monday. Bye!