Your best ideas deserve more than a single impression! Many marketing-oriented nonfiction authors make the mistake of just sharing their best ideas in a single blog post, podcast, or newsletter.
To create the highest possible conversions, however, your best ideas require multiple exposures.
When you create a blog post with multiple ideas, i.e. “10 Ways to Increase Book Sales,” you’re gambling that a high percentage of your market is going to notice and respond to your first message.
There are several reasons your message may be overlooked. Perhaps the SEO for your post is less efficient than it normally is. Perhaps your intended market is not paying full attention to your blog post because of an upcoming deadline, an unexpected meeting, or a sick child. There are numerous reasons even your loyal readers may miss your “one-and-only” chance to engage their interest and convince them to take the next step leading to mutually satisfying relationship with you.
Individual issues of your email newsletters are not immune to the attention deficits that may reduce response to online media. Your 10 Ways newsletter may be lost due in the clutter caused by filled inboxes—not an unusual situation these days.
Step 1: Replace “event” with a series
The easiest solution is to share your best ideas in a carefully spaced series of exposures. This can consist of a series of blog posts, podcasts, or email newsletters.
Instead of sharing all 10 ideas at once, consider sharing the one-at-a-time over 10 weeks. Even better, share your best ideas in installments:
- First Installment: Describe the relevance and benefits of your series and, perhaps, share the first 3 ideas.
- Second installment: Share the next 4 ideas.
- Third installment: Share the remaining ideas and summarize the key ideas of your series.
Now, for, essentially, the same amount of work (i.e. planning, writing, and editing), you’re sharing your best ideas over 3 weeks, if you’re blog once a week, or two weeks if you’re blogging twice a week.
The power of a series is much more likely to be remembered and acted on.
The first blog post builds anticipation for the second and third installments. The second promotes the third installment and reminds your market to re-visit the first. The third installment boost traffic to the first installment.
Is the series idea worth it?
It’s important to remember that the series approach doesn’t require much work? If you’re comfortable creating a 10 Ways post, you’ll find it a relatively easy task to convert it into a series. It’s primarily a matter of cut-and-pasting your first draft into three separate posts.
The series approach described above can be adapted into 3 podcasts or 3 issues of your newsletter.
Step 2: Lead generators
The value of your best ideas can be leveraged even further by using the above content as a lead generator. A lead generator shares premium content—like a white paper—in exchange for the reader’s email address and permission to send their newsletter in the future. Nonfiction authors love lead generators because they help authors sell more copies of their current book and builds their email list to promote upcoming books.
The easiest way to create a valuable lead generator is to:
- Combine Installments 1, 2, and 3 into a single file.
- Add an introduction and conclusion that stresses the benefits and relevance of the white paper’s relevance.
- Create, or have created, an attractive front cover.
Remember that lead generators typically enjoy a long life. Choose your 10 Ways carefully, and your white paper can be as valuable a year from now as it was when you created it.
Step 3: Timing your messages
As a refinement, once you become comfortable with the series concept and want to take it to the highest level, you can deliver your lead generating message over a series of days (or weeks). Recent email software has made it practical for authors to create a series of messages that are delivered weekly intervals.
You have the choice of sending follow-up email messages at predictable intervals based on the day of the week the recipient signed-up, or send them at daily or weekly intervals.
ConvertKit is an email software firm that has replaced the cumbersome programming formerly needed with a graphical interface. No tedious coding! You can set up a series of emails that will automatically be sent every day, every other day, once a week, or twice a week. You can also track responses and send different versions to readers who are already signed-up to receive your email newsletter.
Each email, of course, can contain links to download Adobe Acrobat PDF files or permit access online audio or video files.
You can take the idea of sharing your best ideas as far as you want. Once you recognize the limitations of “single impression marketing,” you can take the series approach to its highest level—converting your original Ten Ways content into highly-profitable videos.
The secret to success is to expand each of your original
ten ideas into a separate video lesson!
Your “allies” in nurturing your best ideas to video profits are firms like Thinkific. These firms offer an online platform where you can create and host your videos. They also handle all aspects of billing and distributing profits. This frees you to concentrate your energy into developing new markets for your original Ten Ways content.
More important, while your Ten Ways video is generating profits, you can explore your previously created blog posts and newsletters, looking for additional content you can use as the basis for future videos.
Many nonfiction authors may initially view this 3-step conversion process as “Space Age futuristic” However, conversion journey from a single blog post to video profits is a formula that countless nonfiction authors have used to transform their business and their lives.
If you can do what most people can’t do, i.e. “write a book,” you can also make a similar journey to boost conversions and profits from your best ideas. It may not happen overnight, but over time. But that’s OK! You probably didn’t write your first book overnight.
The hardest part is taking that first step is committing to sharing your best ideas one “Way” at a time.
Author Bio:
Roger didn’t major in English, nor was he an experienced reporter when he wrote Looking Good in Print: A Guide to Basic Design for Desktop Publishing. He was an “accidental author.” But, Looking Good in Print was a bestseller around the world, ultimately translated into over 30 languages. While writing over 25 nonfiction books, Roger learned what worked—and what didn’t. These are lessons he freely shares with his coaching clients. If you like his ideas, you’ll enjoy his coaching even more. Schedule a free introductory 20-minute coaching call.
If you like this blog post, you’ll love our Author Toolkit for book marketing. It includes checklists, templates, worksheets and more. Check it out!
