Writing an eBook is an excellent way to get your message across. It has a number of advantages over the traditional blog post:
- Longer format to convey more information than a standard blog post
- Marketed towards an audience that already wants to know what you have to say
- Ablility to have a creatively published layout without the complications of live code
Putting an eBook to use, however, takes some skill. You can’t simply paste in a bunch of text you would otherwise have as website content and assume it will work. You need to put thought into your design and content. Here are some tips to make the process easier.
1. Write with Purpose
You need to write with a detailed purpose in mind. Writing an eBook simply to advertise your brand isn’t a good enough purpose. You need to know exactly what you’re trying to accomplish. Think of it like building your website or blog, on a smaller scale.
2. Write for your Readers
Your eBook will never top the Amazon bestseller lists. You’re not writing for an audience of millions. Instead, you’re focusing your eBook on the people who are already interested in your site. They want to know more, and so they look into your eBook for insights not available to normal blog readers. What can you tell these people that they don’t already know from your blog?
3. Write with Format in Mind
The format of your eBook matters almost as much as the content. Are you laying everything out as a case study, progressing from start to finish? Are you giving a series of examples, with discrete information for each? Are you providing a narrative approach, to make everything more personal? You need to know how you’re laying the piece out before you write your first word.
4. Write Just Enough
Writing your eBook is a matter of writing the right amount of content. You want to provide more information and detail than your website, social media accounts and blog provide. On the other hand, you don’t want to flood the reader with so much information that they lose sight of your brand or their attention fades away. It may take a few iterations to get this one right.
5. Write it Again
Writing is an iterative process. You will write your content, proofread it and rewrite it so it shines. Then you publish your eBook. You’re done, right? Wrong. Next, you need to do it all over again. Study the success of your eBook. What did people like about it? What did they fail to take away from it? Did your message come across? Once you have all of this information, you can begin work on a second edition of your eBook.
If you put these tips to use, you’re sure to end up with an excellent eBook. From there, you simply need to market it to the right people and watch the conversions roll in. Ideally, you already have an audience waiting to hear from you, so you can share and watch it fly.
