Mike's Guide To Building Effective Guides

This guide will explore the methods and resources available to build great guides, using free tools widely available on the web. The first and most important decision in guide building is defining your guide's theme. What is the topic you are exploring? Are you outlining a general overview of a topic or getting specific to an instance within a topic, like the difference between music generally and "The Rolling Stones" specifically. Once you have decided what your topic and focus will be it is time to write, collect, and assemble the resources pertaining to your guide. Tools like Google Suggest will aid in fleshing out or narrowing down any topic that you may be considering by showing what areas are being searched for by users within your proposed guide topic. Organize your content into like categories or subcategories. This will help users follow the flow of your guide enabling them to better understand what your are presenting rather than a jumble of ideas or concepts thrown together without any logical ordering. Text for your guide should be written from your perspective. Referencing other materials or guides is best used in a supporting or augmentive role with proper credit given along with an link to the reference material when possible. This includes news articles, blogs, websites, or published print materials. Wikipedia is a great resource for viewing information on topics you may have an interest in writing about. Use of images can enhance your guide tremendously enabling you to connect to your reader on a visual level. This holds true especially when dealing with "How To" guides when steps taken may be tricky. It is always nice to see what you should expect when executing the steps outlined in a "How To" guide. Image services like Flickr are typically free and allow you to post your images for use on other sites. Video is another source of media that is becoming widely excepted as a form of instruction. Like still images, video is extreme