How-To Guide Template

How-to guides are the workhorses of content marketing. They drive consistent organic traffic, establish your brand as a trustworthy resource, and warm up cold prospects by solving real problems before they've ever heard of your product. A single well-written how-to guide can generate leads for years.

But most how-to content is vague, padded with filler, or stuffed with unnecessary prerequisites. This template gives you the structure to write guides that actually rank, actually get read, and actually send people toward your product.

The Anatomy of a High-Performing How-To Guide

Before filling in the template, understand what makes a how-to guide work:

Search intent match. Readers searching "how to write a content brief" want step-by-step instructions — not a 500-word meditation on why content briefs matter. Match what you deliver to what they came for.

Progressive difficulty. Start with context (what and why), move into steps (the how), end with next actions. Never bury the steps.

Specificity over coverage. A guide that teaches one thing extremely well outperforms a guide that covers five things superficially. Narrow your scope.

Embedded proof. Examples, screenshots, real numbers. Abstract instructions get skimmed; concrete demonstrations get followed.

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How-To Guide Template

[HEADLINE]

Formula: How to [Accomplish Goal] [Qualifier/Context]

Qualifier options:

• Speed: "in 30 minutes"
• Audience: "as a first-time founder"
• Constraint: "without a marketing team"
• Outcome: "that actually converts"

Examples:

• How to Write a Content Brief That Actually Gets Used
• How to Set Up a Content Marketing System in a Single Afternoon
• How to Repurpose One Blog Post Into 10 Social Assets Without Hiring Anyone

Your headline: ___

Target keyword: ___

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[Introduction — 150-250 words]

Template:

Opening line: State the goal directly. "This guide walks you through [exact thing you'll teach them]."

Relevance statement: Who is this for and why does it matter to them right now? One specific sentence.

What they'll have after reading: Make a concrete promise. "By the end, you'll have [specific deliverable or capability]."

Optional credibility signal: Brief mention of experience/data that qualifies you to write this. Keep it to one sentence — readers are here for the content, not your bio.

Quick-start note: If experienced readers can skip ahead, tell them where to jump.

Example intro:

This guide shows you exactly how to create a content calendar for a startup with no dedicated marketing team — from scratch, in about two hours.

It's written for founders and solo marketers who know they should be publishing consistently but keep starting over every month with a blank spreadsheet.

By the end, you'll have a working 90-day content calendar, a repeatable process for filling it, and a template you can reuse every quarter.

If you already have a content strategy and just need the calendar structure, jump to Step 3.

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[Prerequisites / What You'll Need — Optional, 100-150 words]

Include this section only if there are genuine prerequisites. Skip it if anyone can follow along cold.

Template:

H2: Before You Begin

To follow this guide, you'll need:

• [Prerequisite 1 — tool, access level, information, skill]
• [Prerequisite 2]
• [Prerequisite 3]

Time estimate: [X] minutes / hours

Difficulty: Beginner / Intermediate / Advanced

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[Step-by-Step Instructions — Core of the Guide]

This is the most important section. Each step should be a discrete action the reader can take. Not "think about your goals" — but "open a spreadsheet and create four columns labeled [X, Y, Z, W]."

Step template (repeat for each step):

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H2: Step [N]: [Action Verb + Specific Outcome]

One-sentence summary of what this step accomplishes and why it matters in the sequence.

[Paragraph 1: What to do. Be specific. Include exact clicks, exact inputs, exact decisions to make. Use active voice and imperative mood — "Click," "Enter," "Select," not "You should click."]

[Paragraph 2: How to do it well / common variations. Address the decision points your reader will hit.]

[Pro tip, callout, or warning — use sparingly, max 1 per step]

[End with a checkpoint: "Once you've done this, you should have/see/be able to [specific result]."]

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Recommended number of steps: 5-10. Fewer than 4 and you're not teaching a real process. More than 10 and you probably need two guides.

How to scope each step:

• One clear action per step
• Roughly equal length (100-200 words each)
• Sequential — completing step N puts you in position to start step N+1
• End state is describable: "At this point, you have [X]"

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[Example Walkthrough — 300-400 words]

Show the steps in action with a real or realistic example. This is what separates good how-to guides from great ones.

Template:

H2: Example: [Specific Scenario Title]

Let's walk through an example using [specific company type / persona / scenario].

[Company description: "Imagine a 3-person SaaS startup selling project management software to engineering teams. They publish about once a month right now and want to move to weekly."]

Applying Step 1: [Show exactly what they would do in this context — with specific inputs, decisions, and outputs]

Applying Step 2: [Continue through the steps, or focus on the 2-3 most instructive ones]

Result: [Describe the concrete output the example company has at the end]

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[Troubleshooting / Common Mistakes — 200-300 words]

Template:

H2: Common Mistakes to Avoid

H3: Mistake 1: [Name of Mistake]

[What the mistake looks like, why people make it, and what to do instead. Be specific.]

H3: Mistake 2: [Name of Mistake]

[Same structure]

H3: Mistake 3: [Name of Mistake]

[Same structure]

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[Next Steps / What to Do Now — 150-200 words]

Template:

H2: What to Do Next

Now that you've [completed the goal of the guide], here's where to go from here:

1. [Immediate next action] — [Brief description of what to do right now, today]
2. [Build-on action] — [What to do next week or next month to compound this work]
3. [Related guide or resource] — [Internal link to the logical next piece of content]

If you want to do this faster, [brief mention of how your product helps — one sentence, soft CTA, not aggressive].

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[CTA Block]

Template:

[Product CTA] [Product name] automates/streamlines/accelerates [the thing you just taught them to do manually]. [One sentence on how it works.] [Link: "Try [Product Name] free →"]

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Style Guidelines for How-To Guides

Voice and Tone

• Write in second person: "you" not "users"
• Use imperative mood for instructions: "Click" not "You should click"
• Short sentences for instructions (under 20 words)
• Longer sentences for context and explanation
• No passive voice in step instructions

Length Calibration

• Simple how-to (3-5 steps, narrow topic): 800-1,200 words
• Intermediate how-to (5-8 steps): 1,200-2,000 words
• Complex how-to or multi-part process: 2,000-3,500 words (consider splitting into a series)

What to Avoid

• Burying steps in long paragraphs
• Step headlines that don't describe the action ("Step 3: Content" vs. "Step 3: Choose Your Content Types and Map Them to Funnel Stages")
• Prerequisites that aren't real requirements
• Vague verbs: "consider," "think about," "explore" — use "decide," "list," "set"

Using Averi to Write How-To Guides at Scale

The challenge with how-to content isn't writing one guide — it's maintaining a library of 50. In Averi, you can define your ICP and brand voice once, then use Averi's AI drafting tools to generate how-to drafts that stay consistent across topics and authors. The content queue lets you plan your how-to series months ahead, and the Library gives your team a single place to manage and update every guide as your product evolves.

Create your first how-to guide in Averi →

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Further Reading

• how to build a content marketing strategy that drives leads
• the best content marketing workflow for seed-stage SaaS startups
• build your content engine playbook

Frequently Asked Questions

How long should a how-to guide be?

Match length to complexity, not word count targets. A guide covering 5 clear steps might need 900 words; a guide covering a multi-week process might need 2,500 words. The test: can a reader complete the goal after reading? If yes, it's long enough. If there are big gaps in understanding, add words. If there's padding, cut it. For SEO, most competitive how-to keywords are won by guides in the 1,500-2,500 word range.

Should I include screenshots and visuals?

Yes, especially for software tutorials. Screenshots reduce cognitive load and catch readers who skim. Even rough annotated screenshots (with arrows and callouts) outperform text-only instructions. For process guides that aren't software-specific, simple diagrams or numbered step visuals help. If you don't have design resources, tools like Loom or Scribe can auto-generate step-by-step visuals from a screen recording.

How do I choose what how-to topics to write about?

Start with the questions your customers ask in sales calls, onboarding sessions, and support tickets. These are proven needs with proven search volume. Layer on keyword research to validate demand — look for how-to queries with 100-1,000 monthly searches and low-medium difficulty (avoid highly competitive head terms until you have domain authority). Build a 90-day roadmap covering your product's core use cases.

How do I update how-to guides when my product changes?

Mark guides with a "last verified" date and set a calendar reminder to audit them quarterly. When major product changes ship, immediately update any affected guides — outdated instructions destroy trust faster than almost anything else. In Averi, your content Library keeps all your guides in one place, making systematic reviews much easier than hunting through Google Docs.

Can I repurpose how-to guides into other content formats?

Absolutely — how-to guides are among the most repurposable content formats. A single guide can become: a YouTube/Loom tutorial (record yourself following the steps), a LinkedIn carousel (one step per slide), a Twitter/X thread (each step as a tweet), an email nurture sequence (one step per email), and an FAQ page (the troubleshooting section). Plan for this when writing — clean step structure makes it much easier to extract into other formats.