How to Write an E-Book

As you’ve probably seen, e-books are everywhere-and for good reason. Writing an e-book for your inbound marketing efforts is a great way to establish yourself as an industry expert and bring in more leads.

If you’ve never been through the process of putting one together, it can seem a little daunting, but don’t let that prevent you from writing one-we have all the tips you need to get started.

Write an E-Book (Step-By-Step Guide)

1. Decide The Persona Your E-Book Will Target

Before you can even begin writing, you need to choose a persona, or in other words, a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on research and real data about your current customers.

Whether you research on Google or interview current customers, do whatever you can to learn as much as possible about this persona and write your e-book based off their wants and needs. Remember, just because you like your topic doesn’t mean they will. Forget about your personal interests and write for them.

2. Develop a Compelling Topic That Solves a Problem or Educates Your Persona

Obviously choosing a topic is important, but choosing the right topic is what you really need to focus on.

Based off of your persona research, you should decide if the topic is scientific, a quick read, broad, niche-focused, etc. For example, if you know your persona has a very busy schedule, you want to choose a topic you can cover relatively quickly. If your persona is in the healthcare field, focus on their specific pain points based on their position, not healthcare in general-even if they fall under that category. Address a problem that they need solved. Keep in mind, once you choose your topic, you don’t need to include every little detail around the subject. Figure out the main points you want to convey and plan from there.

Remember, the subject of your e-book needs to be clear to the reader immediately. If they don’t know what they are reading within a matter of seconds, they’ll stop. Let them know what they are about to dive into.

3. Organize Your Thoughts First, Write Second

When writing your e-book, chances are a million thoughts are going to be racing through your mind that will pull you in different directions. So how do you overcome this? Create an outline.

Your outline should include:

• A table of contents
• An introduction
• A list of each main topic you want to cover
• A list of subtopics below each main topic
• Brief description or main points of each of the sub-topics
• Conclusion/final thoughts

Doing this will allow you to plot out a natural flow of the e-book and will help you focus. From here, you can also see what areas need a bit more content and which areas are good to go. It may seem like an extra step, but using an outline will save you time in the long run. Once your outline is in a good place, it’s time to begin writing.

4. Decide on a Title That Captures the Reader’s Attention and is Optimized

The title is the first impression people will have of your e-book. Make sure it’s engaging enough to stop your reader in their tracks and take notice; however, it’s not enough to just have a compelling title. This day in age, it must be optimized for search as well if anybody is ever going to see it.

Do extensive keyword research and choose words to place in your title that either have a difficulty score lower than 60, meaning it won’t be too difficult for you to rank (the lower the better). Also, be sure that people actually search for those keywords each month.

5. Write the Manuscript

When writing your e-book, don’t just throw all your thoughts into giant paragraphs for pages on end. Who wants to read that? Be sure to mix it up by including bullet points, bolded or italic words, callouts, etc.

You’ll also want to include a table of contents and section headers so that the reader knows what they are getting into.

Referring to the outline you put together will help as you get started as well. If you have an outline by the time you start writing, the strategy and format are already done for you. Now you just need to let the words flow.

6. Proofread

Once you’re done writing, it’s time to proofread. You may be the smartest person in the room, but if you have typos throughout your published work, you can lose credibility fast.

Be sure to read and reread your e-book, and once that’s done, give it to somebody else for a second pair of eyes. You want it to be as professional as possible.

7. Design and Layout

You know the phrase “never judge a book by its cover?” Well, the fact is most people do, and you don’t want it to happen to you. If you’re not good with design, find someone who is and have them create a cover and layout of the e-book for you. Your audience is constantly getting content thrown at them. The only way your e-book will get read is to figure out a way for it to stand out from the crowd.

Assuming you get the reader to the first page of your e-book, you must also lay out your content in a way that is easy for the reader to digest. Include images and a design that that keeps the reader’s attention and that falls within your topic.

8. Promote, Promote, Promote

You have just written the greatest e-book the world has ever seen, congratulations! Here’s the thing though, nobody will ever know it exists unless you promote it. Dedicate time to getting your e-book in front of your audience. A few ways to get it out there can include:

Repurpose Blog Content into an E-Book

If you’ve read through the above process and thought to yourself, “I’m already writing a ton of content, why do I have to start from scratch?” Well, the truth is that you don’t need to (but you can if that’s what’s best for you).

Typically, when you write a blog post, it is out there for the whole world to see. Blogs can help build your authority within your industry as well as increase your search ranks if you include targeted keywords (and you should).

But by creating an e-book where many blogs can be compiled into one place, you have the ability to gate it by putting it behind a form in order to generate leads -you can also use it as a CTA on said blog posts, promote it on social, through email marketing, etc.

Sound good to you? Here’s a look at how to make it happen.

1. Choose the blog posts you want to repurpose.

When choosing which blog posts to turn into an e-book, choose a handful of posts that revolve around the same topic. As mentioned above when we discussed personas, it’s important to know your audience’s pain points at the time and to choose blog posts that revolve around those points. Your audience will want a focused and condensed e-book, not a bunch of random blog posts thrown together.

2. Take apart and rebuild the blog posts.

Once you decide which blog posts to use, don’t just copy and paste them into a PDF, put a cover on it, and call it a day. You’ll want to take a close look at each post and create an outline for a natural flow of an e-book.

It should be structured just like any other e-book with an intro, body, and conclusion. This means you will have to break the blog posts apart, play with wording, sentence structure, and maybe even mix posts to get them into an offer that flows and makes sense for your reader.

3. Develop a cover and format the e-book.

Once the copy is complete, it’s time to lay it out and include engaging images throughout the e-book. Also, play around with bold letters and italics throughout the document to help keep the reader’s attention. Make sure you stand out from the crowd. If you do not know how to create a cover, hire a designer.

4. Create the conversion path.

Now that the content is all set and ready to go, it’s time to create the conversion path. Included in the conversion path is a landing page, thank you page, CTA, and follow up email. Remember to do the following when creating an effective conversion path:

• Ensure the CTA and Landing Page headline match
• Remove navigation and include an image on the landing page with a form
• Be brief, include bullet points, and explain the benefits of your offer on the landing page
• Make sure your thank you page includes the offer and a secondary offer or form

Send a follow-up email that makes it easy for the lead to retrieve the content and that also includes another offer to encourage reconversion.

5. Promote.

When the timing is right (you don’t want the launch to interfere with another offer of yours), it’s time to promote the landing page.

Companion Assets to Create with E-Books

In the section above, we discuss pulling together existing blog posts to create an e-book, a very powerful tool in your toolbox to use to generate leads. However, once again, it’s a smart idea to maximize all of your efforts in creating this content to re-use it for another purpose.

By creating varied content, you can reach prospects in their preferred styles of digesting information (some people are visual learners, remember).

To help break this down, let’s pretend you’ve created an asset for your targeted industrial buyers called “Metal Stamping 101” (one of our favorite manufacturing examples).

Here’s what else you can create:

1. Infographics

Infographics are great for awareness and can simplify content that may be difficult for a visitor to consume otherwise. In addition, due to the illustrative nature of an infographic, it can help breakdown complex manufacturing processes and show off the differences between fourslide and progressive die stamping.

The best videos are quick, informative, and engaging. They can also make companies less robotic and more human by putting a voice (and face) to a product, process, or service. The more of a human connection people feel, the more comfortable and likely they are to buy from you.

Common uses for videos are visual case studies, expert interviews, and product demos-all of which work for our example here.

3. SlideShare

Like videos, SlideShare is another visual way to show your content. Not only is it useful as a way to establish authority and generate leads, but it is very simple to use.

Using this format could be as easy as pulling the highlights out of your e-book into a slide format, adding visuals (and videos, like we suggest above!), and anything else you think adds context.

Webinars are a great way to engage with your audience as you are communicating with them in real time, and it fits in well with the topic from the example e-book.

Hosting a webinar allows you to discuss topics and trends in your industry which increases your reputation within the field. Webinars allow you to show your expertise while providing information about your product.

Answering your audience’s questions live makes them feel like they’re having an actual conversation with you and are building a relationship with you. The more the attendee feels connected to your company, the more likely they’ll be to trust and buy from you.

Originally published at https://www.smartbugmedia.com.