The e-book strategy to blogging success

Bloggers need to pay much attention to the subjects they choose to write about. It’s the only way to attract and retain subscribers.

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

One method for accomplishing long-range planning and a logical progression of the information for your blog is something I call the “e-book strategy to blogging.” It’s a simple concept but produces very good results.

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 with this in mind. 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. Some people call this “re-purposing” your content.

All that’s required is assembling the blog posts you’ve written and then organizing them into chapters – which is no big deal because you already outlined them 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. There is a site called ebooks.com that sells e-books in a variety of categories, including business, computers and fitness.

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. A different focus for different audiences.

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. That’s not a formula for retaining subscribers.

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. So you’re serving both of your audiences simultaneously by, perhaps, doing one blog post per week targeting job hunters and a second posting that week geared toward employers.

Another alternative is to write separate blogs for your separate audiences. Some companies have many more than two audiences and publish many blogs for both internal and external audiences.

It depends on your business. It depends on your objective. Any business must play to its strengths and constituents.

Whatever the case, consider the e-book strategy to blogging. It will give you an organized blogging strategy and create products capable of promoting your business.