Writing a Book will Build Your Authority and Credibility

Writing a relevant and authoritative book concerning your business niche or specialty is one of the fastest ways to establish your authority in your particular industry. A published work that others find useful builds your status as an expert in what you do and enhances your credibility within your market. Your audience assumes that if you’ve written a book on a particular subject, you know a lot about it. Therefore, you’re an expert. Who else would you want to engage for a service but the person who “wrote the book” on your field?
How should you begin? Start a blog or regular newsletter about your book. Send a newsletter out once every three or four weeks and blog two or three times a week about the content of your book. If your book is available through a traditional publisher, be sure you secure permission to use excerpts in online and print advertising. Provide a link to your website at the bottom of every article and newsletter so readers can purchase your book and learn more about your services.
 

Create It Once, Use It Multiple Times

Creating and publishing a book means you have plenty of content you can use again and again. Repurpose sections and chapters of the book as new or updated content, all pointing back to your book and, ultimately, back to your business. While a book is credible, not everyone likes to read. Why not take the core process you lay out in your book and create a video overview? Or how about creating several video or podcast episodes on your website discussing each chapter with a guest?
I’ll bet I can read your mind: “Why should I do this? Why can’t I simply use my book?” As an author, I know well that it is usually impossible to include everything necessary in a book. Moreover, as business and the world around us changes, so will the relevancy of what we have written or how it should be applied. Changing factors may warrant an update to the book and give reasons to introduce new information through a variety of venues that will reach different people.
 

Use Your Book to Attract Interviews and Speaking Engagements

Expert status and professional credibility are very powerful in securing media attention. If you speak as part of your business marketing strategy (and you should) leverage your book and the authority it lends you to schedule speaking engagements at trade shows and other business venues. Your status as a published author affects how you are perceived by the media and business leaders.
Publish all interviews, articles, and speaking engagements on your website, and include links to your book. Be sure to email articles, interviews, and publicity links to all the customers and prospects on your mailing list. Letting your audience know you have been featured in interviews and trade shows increases your credibility and attracts even more interview offers.
 

Use Your Book as a Calling Card When Networking

When attending conferences, seminars, training events, networking events, or workshops, have copies of your book available. These and other venues are filled with ideal clients and great referral partners. Give away copies of your book as your business or calling card. Signed copies are especially prized and make a great long-term reference to your business. No one throws away books that are signed by the author.
Remember, you are not trying to sell your book; you’re trying to sell your business. The book is a tool that lends you credibility. Give free copies to steady customers and good prospects. In the case of existing customers, present it to them personally when possible along with a personal note thanking them for their business, referrals, or any other way they have helped your company.
 

A Note About Publishing Your Book

Although there are myriads of self-publishing venues available now, that is no reason to skimp on quality. Beyond providing a solid work filled with relevant and useable knowledge, your book should reflect professionalism in every detail, from design to layout. Only choose high-quality images that reflect your business specialty or book topic well.
Titles are important and can be the reason a person chooses to open a book or tosses it aside. The back cover material is where the book sells itself and for your purposes, sells your business. Details matter. Appearances make impressions for good or bad. Invest the necessary thought and treasure into a book that reflects well on you and your company and it can be an effective tool for building your business.
How have you used a book to build your business? How did you go about choosing a topic and creating your book? We’d love to share your experiences with our readers. Please share your tips or lessons from using a book to build your business in the comment section below.

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• Drink more water
• Spend more time exercising
• Spend more time doing homework
• Enjoy more time with your family
• Floss and brush your teeth longer
• Learn another language
• Plant a tree
• Get that yearly physical
• Wash the dog
• Call your mother more often
• And you can add to the list…

How do you carve out room for your writing when all these other important things are clamoring for your attention?
 

Set a Written Commitment

Make a serious commitment and set it all down on paper. When and where, for how long, and everything else that pertains to your habit. Write it down. Make a personal contract with yourself and date it. Post it where it can give you daily motivation as you write. You are a writer; now adhere to your commitment and write. As you begin a new writing project, consider composing a new contract specific to the new work, with a beginning date and firm commitments until completion.
 

Write Every Day

Opinions abound concerning this, and debate will never cease. Don’t waste time on the discussions pro and con – just set a time and place to write every day and write. Every. Day. Period. Be honest; we all find time to do the things we deem important to us. If writing is as important to you as you think, say, or claim, then carve out the time and do it. Every day. Eliminate other lesser pursuits, shove things that can wait aside, and write. How long isn’t as important, at least in the beginning. Fifteen minutes every day is better than nothing.
 

Set a Trigger

A trigger is an event that sets off your habit. Many smokers indulge when they wake, when stressed, or when eating. Those actions or events are the trigger. To create a new habit, you need to associate your habit with a trigger. If you write in the morning, you may associate it with going to the bathroom or your morning cup of coffee. An evening writing habit might be associated with doing the dishes after the evening meal. Choose a trigger you know you will do every day as a routine, and connect your writing time to it.
 

Get Accountability Partners

Share your new writing habit with others and ask them to hold you accountable. Tell your family and friends, co-workers, other writer friends, post it on your blog. Commit publicly and explain what you will do, and further commit to report on a regular basis. Give a few trusted people permission to call or text at random times and check up on you, or provide some needing encouragement. Accountability is a vital step to forming any important practice, including your writing habit.
 

Commit to a 30-Day Focus

A vital aspect of forming any habit is focus. If you place your full, undivided focus on forming this habit, you will likely succeed. Set a 30 day period and focus relentlessly on your writing habit. Don’t try anything else new during this period. Don’t allow anything to diffuse your focus. If necessary, let other things go. After all, it’s just 30 days; the laundry will still be there. Seriously, make your writing habit the absolute top priority for that month. The focus you learn will carry over into the next days and months.
 

Keep a Writing Log

Get a calendar or create a spreadsheet for the sole purpose of recording your writing. Record your time spent writing, and a short note about what was accomplished. Remember your accountability partners? Share your progress with them as well. Post a short entry on your blog or social media immediately after you perform the habit. The concrete record will motivate you to carry on, especially when others become accustomed to seeing your update. Write daily, log it, and share it.

Reward Yourself

Set some writing goals and celebrate when you reach them. It could be a week of writing every day or a certain word count reached. Create milestones and even brainstorm and designate how you will reward yourself when you reach each one. This is key motivation to keep going. A writer I know recently rewarded himself with a retreat to a beautiful coastal island for a week of relaxation and writing. Start small with a nice dinner out or a pair of new jeans. Make each goal tougher and each reward more fulfilling.
 

Constantly Look for Inspiration

The best motivation is inspiration. What inspires you to write? Perhaps reading about other successful writers and their habits. Some find certain types of music to provide inspiration or spark artistic expression. Find a topic you feel strongly about and let that emotion motivate you to write. Discover an important spiritual connection and express your joy and satisfaction through writing. Research a cause that is near and dear and write about it.
 

Have Fun

Discipline doesn’t have to be drudgery. Without some fun, you will lose the motivation to continue your writing habit. Experiment with different types of music and see how it affects your creativity. Enjoy your favorite coffee or tea while you write. Wear your favorite writing jammies. Meet with some friends for a time of brainstorming and writing. Take your writing to new and different locations, coffee shops, restaurants, or outdoor spaces. Enjoy a new environment and write about it. A friend of mine recently spend time writing while sitting in the middle of a corn maze!
What happens if you screw up and miss a day? Well, it’s not time for the ball and chain just yet. Think about what caused you to miss, and find a solution so it doesn’t happen again. Report your failure to your accountability partners (yes, call it a failure; failure isn’t final) and keep going. With persistence, even the snail reached Noah’s Ark.
What great suggestions or practices do you have to start and maintain a writing habit? We’d love to hear them! Why not share them in the comments below so all our readers can benefit from your experiences? Thanks!

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Why do you Need a Content Marketing Strategy?

First things first… If you’re not fully employing fresh, original content as a marketing tool, you might find an introduction to the subject to be helpful. According to an article on Forbes, this type of marketing involves making and then distributing content that people find relevant and valuable. Further, consistently writing good content helps marketers acquire a specific audience and eventually create profit.
Forbes goes on to emphasize how important it is to create content that people find valuable. While this word is often used synonymously with “useful,” valuable content isn’t always useful, at least not in the way that a recipe or instructions for changing a tire would be. True enough, it can be that, too, but valuable content can also speak to the heart and soul (much like Canfield’s work.)
It’s also a bit subjective, meaning that it’s highly targeted for a specific niche. For example, a website or a book dedicated to improving your running time isn’t as likely to appeal to the average couch potato as it will to the average runner. The content that you create is determined by your audience. In this case, the avid runner would find your content creation efforts valuable. However, the couch potato may or may not be as excited by the content you create.

What Kinds of Content Can You Produce?

Before we move on solely to books-as-marketing-tools, you should know about some of the other types of content that content creators make. They’re worth mentioning because usually, a good marketing strategy involves using them in tandem. Each brings a new aspect of your brand story to the table and each appeals to a slightly different type of person.
1. Blogs and websites have been around for a long time and they’re still one of the go-to foundational pieces in your content toolbox. These web tools get picked up by the search engines, giving you free traffic. They’re the first place to look when you’re trying to create a sales funnel. Many marketers offer free white papers or videos on their sites. And those who have a book or books published can post excerpts from the books and book giveaways to support their marketing efforts.
2. Infographics are popular because they provide you with at-a-glance information. From a marketing perspective, they’re also easy to share and to pin on sites like Pinterest. This can drive an enormous amount of traffic to your other content. And this content can deal with anything. For example,you can create an infographic about the content in your book. This allows people who are short on time to get some information from your book in bite-sized chunks. Most people are very busy. The beauty of infographics is that they act as an appetizer for those who are hungry for content. It’s even better if your content satisfies the need that drove them to go looking for content in the first place.
3. Video marketing is also big. Video, according to HubSpot, has a high conversion rate – up to 80%. And most people will share a video. For book marketers, video can be a dream. Video gives authors a platform for book trailers (like movie trailers only for books.) But video does something else. If you speak on your video, it shows off your speaking and personality. If you’re trying to build a clientele or if you want to start making at least some of your money from public speaking fees, the combination of having videos showing your speaking style and published books about your area of expertise will help you immensely.

Why Writing a Book Gives You Credibility

According to an article on LinkedIn, writing a book offers numerous advantages to the content marketer. Among them are credibility and the acceleration of trust. Both of these “intangibles” are important if you’re selling big ticket items (which could be products or services.) When you pass your book on to a potential client, you become an expert in his/ her eyes. For example, let’s say you’re a marketing expert in the medical and tech fields. Let’s also say that you have a high sales closing rate. Other industry professionals in the medical or tech marketing field would probably pay very good money to read your book. It helps them gain insights into how to do their job better.
But here’s the real kicker. Books should be a cornerstone of your content marketing efforts because they produce some side benefits. Sure, they make you money if you have good book sales. But they also bring media attention to you and your brand. This, in turn, can lead to speaking engagements.
Here’s why these two factors – media attention and speaking engagements – are so important. First of all, buying advertising in magazines and newspapers can get expensive. Even an ad in the local paper or on local TV is going to cost you several hundred to several thousands of dollars. However, an article about you and your book doesn’t cost you anything. What’s more, people have a different perception of an article they read versus an ad they see. They perceive the article as truthful and authoritative. You’re more likely to be looked at as an expert if you’re interviewed by a journalist than if someone just catches sight of your ad.
As for public speaking engagements, they not only give your expert status a boost, but they can make you some pretty serious money. According to a Chron article, motivational speakers earn in the high eighties or more. The projected job growth for speakers is 21%. Additionally, most speakers offer their books for sale at their speaking engagements. If you’ve written a book and are out promoting it and your brand, then you’ll want to have books to sell and possibly even videos. (This is where it pays to do more than one type of content marketing.) The thing about books is that people keep them for a lot longer than they do most branded content. They refer back to a well-written book often as a source of information. If you’re the one who wrote the book, it’s very likely that it’s you that these same people will come looking for when they have a problem that needs solving.

A Recap of Books-as-Content

Writing and publishing a book offers you many benefits as a marketer. Here’s a look back at a few of them:

• A published book immediately establishes you as an expert in your field. It also makes people trust you and your brand.
• People keep books long after they toss out other types of content. For the people in your niche, your book can provide valuable information that they need.
• Being a published author can lead to free publicity in the media, allowing you to save on your marketing budget.
• Many public speakers, including Jack Canfield, recommend using books as a calling card for other activities, including garnering speaking engagements.
• The content from your book can be turned into other types of marketing materials like infographics and scripts for videos or podcasts.
• Book royalties can add to your bottom line but it will be a slow process.

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