How to Create Shareable Instructional Materials for DIY Auto Repair

If you’re a small auto repair business, you might be looking for ways to engage new customers and grow your reach online. In today’s digital atmosphere, establishing an online presence is more important than ever for cornering the local market.

There are many ways to do this. For instance, you could connect with other local businesses and/or utilize social media. But, the best method of establishing and building trust and loyalty with customers is sharing your expertise.

How can you do that? Through content marketing! In fact, as many as 60% of B2C marketers use content marketing strategies. 

This is why creating shareable instruction materials for auto repair is a great way to get started, as these sought-after pieces of content provide car owners the autonomy to understand their vehicles better.

It stands to reason that by providing valuable online content to your audience, they’re more likely to trust you next time they need auto repair services.

So, in this post, we’ll look at how you can start creating shareable instruction materials for DIY auto repair, and grow your business online.

Let’s dive in!

Find the Right Platform to Share Your Ideas

If you’re entirely new to content marketing for the auto repair industry, you might not know where to start. To share instructions online, you need to find the right platform to share your DIY guides.

Creating a blog is easy—most website builders have in-built features for this purpose. But if you’re creating a blog from the grounds up and don’t have an online presence besides it, a WordPress.com side might be an excellent place to start.

To grow your online audience, you’ll need a professional-looking foundation. So, look to purchasing your own domain name and secure hosting so you can be present and accessible online under your repair shop’s name.

YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms are also great places to spread the word. So, be sure to share your content on all your social media profiles. 

Find Topics Your Customers Care About

Next, it’s vital your content is relevant to your audience. As an auto repair shop, you’re likely aware of the kinds of car issues your customers face the most.

Are many of them easy to fix and not even worth the effort of bringing into your store? In that case, these defects might make the perfect content for shareable instruction materials.

Make a list of your most frequently asked questions as well as any issues customers report that you think they could fix themselves at home. What are the most common maintenance procedures customers would benefit from handling themselves?

Pondering all the above is an excellent way to brainstorm topics relevant to your audience. But, if you’re still stuck for inspiration, head over to Google.

Keep in mind the central question formats: how, why, and what. Then enter topics into the search bar to see how Google completes the sentence.

This indicates others have searched the same questions, and therefore, there might be a demand for instruction materials on the topic.

Got a list? Good! Keep this bank of topics at the ready for whenever you want to create and publish a new piece of content. 

Write for the Layman

Remember—the goal is to share value with your customers. Treat them as intelligent, but always keep in mind that they are not auto repair professionals.

Encourage them to dabble in DIY auto repair through simple formulations and easy-to-follow instructions, but refer them back to a professional if anything more elaborate or potentially dangerous comes up.

Here are a few tips:

• Include descriptions and explanations of different components. While their function might be evident to you, your customers might not be sure what the part does or where to find it
• Avoid overly technical language and describe steps in commonly used terms
• Include step-by-step instructions for even simple procedures and break the text up into sections for the DIY repair.

These are just a few pointers, but you get the idea!

Include Screenshots and Images

Including images in your blogs and how-to guides is an integral part of an effective content marketing strategy. They break up the post and making it easier and more enjoyable to read.

This isn’t just our opinion; studies show that articles containing images enjoy a 94% boost in total views than those without.

DIY auto repair articles benefit from photos that illustrate the car parts your customers should be looking at—showing before and after images, demonstrating the correct visual of a particular component, etc.

If you include case studies and infographics, find out how to snip on mac to prepare pro-looking screenshots for your article.  

Always End With a Call to Action

Last but not least, always round off your instructional materials with a call to action. As the name suggests, it’s just a few lines to encourage the reader to perform some sort of action.

Here are some examples of CTAs:

• Come check out our website at certifiedmastertech.com
• Contact us today for a consultation on auto repair in your area
• Visit our blog for more articles like this
• Visit our auto repair shop in your area for professional assistance
• If you have experienced this issue before comment below to let us know if this fix worked for you

In short, your call to action should make it easy for the reader to engage with you, provide feedback, or purchase your products/services.

Share Your Own DIY Auto Repair Instruction Materials Today

So, what are you waiting for? Become an authority in DIY auto repair by creating shareable content offering genuine value to your customers. By following the advice above, you shouldn’t go too far wrong. 

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