068 - Content Marketing Strategy for a Powerful Book Platform

 Hey guys! Nicole Gabriel here!

Did you know that content marketing strategy is one of the hottest topics on the internet right now?

If you’re not familiar with what this is, let’s start there. A content marketing strategy is how a marketer identifies a particular audience (generally one they wish to market to) and delivers targeted content to them. From a technology perspective, in an online environment, there are technologies that manage and deploy website content…(CMS) content management systems. We are not going to talk about the systems here but we are going to talk about how to effectively build out content for your book project…more the content strategy.

The strategy of building content is an ongoing process that pairs business objectives with meaningful, relevant, and valuable content for achieving particular goals…ultimately to drive a profitable customer action with targeted marketing.

Of course, the most wonderful thing about understanding this as you go into writing a book is how you can align its content to assist you in defining the strategy, plan, and further blowing out the content. It’s one thing to write a book, but literally a whole different story when you can write a book with a targeting and strategic marketing plan and aligned content. A well-thought-out book will create a meaningful, cohesive, engaging, and sustainable impact that will continue to drive profitable customer interaction.

Another key term to know in this discussion is KPI (key performance indicator). This term is used to describe the process of setting, performing, monitoring, and analyzing specific levels of success that have been previously identified for your business or book objectives. You might choose specific measures, such as profit, number of books sold, perhaps the number of conversions made from books sold to new clients gained, etc.

So let’s merge these concepts…what metrics are meaningful to you for your business and how can you use a book to further define targeted areas you wish to either transform or monitor in your business or life? What other goals can you put in place that work in your favor behind the book you wish to write? How could writing a book transform something you wish to shift? Are you starting to see how strategic a book can really be in your life? You see, not everyone is going to read your book. In fact, to be quite honest, not many will read it cover to cover. So, here’s where a book can really serve you…identifying a strategy for how it can work for you. You’ve got a story to tell or a reason you’re interested in writing a book, but why? It always comes down to your why.

Many times writing a book starts with the ego, or perhaps an experience lived that’s worth sharing, and…this is often great stuff for back-filling pages but, is it valuable for the reader? How about for you or your business? How can it be aligned to help either grow, build, plan, or otherwise enhance lives? Even if you are attempting to write a book to one day turn it into a screen play for a movie…when you are writing a book to execute a strategy you’re miles ahead of your competition! So, what’s your strategy? How does a book serve to get your there?

When you produce content you need to appeal to your audience…of course you first have to know who your audience is. Then, you have to deliver valuable up-to-date content and provide solutions to your audiences problems. A book is a great tool for presenting clarity, gives you a voice in a noisy world, it presents an organized system, highlights a thought-out plan, showcases a center of expertise, a skill, or talent.

I’ve sometimes heard people say that a book has content that is out of date and the idea of an eBook or other electronic formats have the feel of real-time up-to-the-minute content, but the reality is that you’re building out the backbone of your system. Lots of people have the ability to spontaneously go online and do a social media live, but they don’t have the ability to do the hard work of thinking through a tangible idea or platform with any kind of congruency and stamina. It’s like the sales guy that makes false promises. You need the back-end system or platform to make anything worthwhile function. Over the years I’ve had plenty of clients come to me with the idea of a book based on experiences and they think they are so fabulous that someone famous is going to call just because they wrote it. It just doesn’t work that way. If your topic is hot perhaps you will win the random book lottery, but truly it’s quite rare.

Creating high-quality content is critical to marketing success. And because of instant social media content and the quick and dynamic nature of blog posting sometimes a book doesn’t fit into the instant nature of now. Once you publish it you have a pretty set level of content. So, this is why you have to pick a topic or a center of expertise and the book qualifies you as an expert of that thing you now more dynamically get to talk about. So, you have the solid platform of being an expert, but now you have to keep going by generating content that grabs attention more immediately and dynamically as you create it. You don’t just get to create the book as sit on it. You now have to work it. The book is just the baseline to begin the discussion of that thing you are an expert of. People will share content because you’ve given value, but they will also not be likely to read all of it so you have to grab their attention with something catchy they may just read the first few words of then share. No matter how good the content is, if you don’t grab attention it’s useless. And quite honestly, the reason we are talking about content strategy and creation here in the first place is because it’s a hot topic. So, what grabs attention? It has to be unique and target your audience—you have to be specific so your reader knows why they would sacrifice their valuable time to read your blog or book. You have to give a reader a sense of urgency as to why they should make the time to read now so they won’t miss out on something. And you always have to provide some kind of value as the gift for reading and so they come back for more.

I was reading an article the other day about list headlines…you know…the ones that claim their are “x-many” tips to doing something…10 tips to loosing weight, 5 top things to do on your vacation to Bali, etc. Have you ever seen the “Portent Idea Generator”? Go over to portent.com and put in a topic and it generates headlines for you. If nothing else, it will make you laugh. I put in “book publishing” and here is what it returned:

How Book Published Could Get Your Blacklisted
How Hollywood Got Book Publishing All Wrong
16 Myths Uncovered About Book Publishing
How Book Publishing Can Help You Predict the Future
The Only Book Publishing Resources You Will Ever Need

I even found out that book publishing will make you a better lover! Nonetheless, you do want to test the titles or headlines you come up with before you run them. You can do a simple search online and see how unique it really is. If you’re using it for one of many blog posts it may not be entirely necessary, but keywords are great ways to get noticed if you pick a hot topic to write about.

Here’s another great tool for building great headlines: CoSchedule. It will allow you to enter your headline and it will do an analysis to determine what headline will drive the most traffic. This tool might work well for your book title, sub title, or tagline generation as well. The reality is that when you define your book title, subtitle, and tagline effectively it will follow you for life. And when you take the time with the right wording you will optimize your results in all online searches…thus, readers and new clients find your book and center of expertise far quicker.

Honestly, this kind of thing just never really crossed my mind with I wrote my first two books. My first book Finding Your Inner Truth…would this be a topic I want to be known for? And, is this something others are looking for help in? I liked my title and it’s honestly a really great book that I’m proud of, but there is no backbone behind it. It never really set me up to do anything. I wasn’t thinking that way at all when I wrote it. And many authors just don’t. It’s really all quite fine if you just feel compelled to share andexperience or a story, but more times than not this isn’t profitable. Again, if this isn’t your goal that’s fine too. Either way I can show you how to produce a quality end product.

As you begin your book project you just need to identify your key performance indicators…do you want to sell books, create awareness, convert readers into clients? What would you deem to be a measure of success? When I wrote my first book I said I had a story to tell and my goal was to change just one life. I changed, and continue to change, many. My most wonderful connection was a gal that touched my heart deeply as she made a long journey to meet me and died shortly thereafter. I gave her final words on her journey. I often pray they were the right words. You just never know how putting a few words between two cardboard covers can change a life!

So remember, no one will find your book if you’re not properly identifying it with the correct words and if your reader wants more than a book you’ll want to prepare for that before you publish it. How else can you develop content to enhance the relationship you have just begun with your reader? You are always selling a product or service and your book is just that tool that gets the attention for whatever that is. A best-seller goal is great but it puts you in the business of writing books. If that’s not your goal then be ready to highlight that area of expertise you’ve now gained the attention for being an expert of.

I just love these kind of discussions. I know many are quite circular, but there’s always a fun little angle that better aligns your how with your why so that you are living your purpose with passion and intent.

I hope you’ve enjoyed your labor day weekend. I know I’ve personally been doing a lot of laboring. I’m having fun but now I’m ready for a holiday! I hope you’ve enjoyed a bit more relaxation!

As always guys…wishing you peace, love, and light!