The e-book strategy to blogging success

January 28, 2010 | Blogging, Writing | Leave a Comment

Bloggers need to pay much attention to the subjects they choose to write about.

Smart bloggers plan ahead, plotting out the subject matter they will tackle during the next month or two. Ideally, the information bloggers share is accretive, with each blog post building on the knowledge imparted in earlier blog posts.

One method for accomplishing long-range planning and a logical progression of the information your blog writes about is something I call the “e-book strategy to blogging.”

Here’s how it works. You outline an entire e-book on the subject you plan to blog about. Any good book is organized to gradually increase the reader’s understanding of its topic.

Write the table of contents. Then write the component parts of each chapter. Each component part represents an individual blog post. When you have completed all the blog posts that comprise the book, you simply republish the accumulated copy in the form of an e-book.

All that’s required is assembling the blog posts you’ve written and then organizing them into chapters – which you outlined at the start of this process. Format the pages so they look attractive and readable and convert it into a PDF file. Voila! You’re ready to market your e-book.

E-books are normally shorter than paper books, with a range of 80-120 pages, and usually free of charge and used to demonstrate competence in the author’s area of expertise. They are often used as an inducement to subscribe to a blog or newsletter, or register for a website, webinar, conference, etc. Or, you could always charge a small fee and sell the fruits of your labor.

Once you’ve completed your first e-book you can plot the next one. For example, a staffing firm that represented both employers and employees might write its first e-book for job hunters (especially given the current job climate) and focus on the things they must do to make themselves viable and marketable to top employers. The second e-book might be written for employers and focused on how to best find, assess and assimilate the talented people they need.

The downside of that one-then-the-other strategy means you would be writing a long series of blog posts geared only toward job hunters, followed by a long series of posts intended for employers.

The problem can be solved by planning both books from the start and publishing alternating posts – one for job hunters followed by one for employers – until you have the full contents for both e-books. Then you can publish them simultaneously.

Another alternative is to write separate blogs for your separate audiences.

It depends on your business. It depends on your objective.

Whatever the case, consider the e-book strategy to blogging.

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