If your company writes a book, it’s a sign that your thoughts and processes are time-tested and organized. Because anyone who can talk deeply enough about a topic to write a book demonstrates depth and experience.
But who has time?
Create a Path of Least Resistance
The key is to make a process that makes the writing of a book the path of least resistance.
A printed, published book is a sign of expertise, whether you self-publish or you get a publisher to do it. But in order to go the long haul, it has to be worthwhile and it has to fit your work and life.
It has to be easy: it has to fit your work and life. This is where a strategy and good project management come in. Project management creates a path of least resistance, making it easy to reach goals. A bad process makes this hard. A good process — one that works for you — makes this easy.
It has to be worthwhile: It has to produce content today, not just in a year. The payoff for writing a book is down the road a ways. But your process should have you creating content that creates thought leadership today, even as you’re compiling insights for your book.
Our Process: Content Strategy (with a Book as a Bonus)
The way we look at it, if you’re creating content for a book, why can’t you use that content for monthly emails, social posts, and blogs?
It should be as easy as talking about it. You can actually write a book without typing a word. Since writing is your insights, organized and captured in book form, you don’t necessarily have to “write” in order to write a book.
Here’s how we wrote ours:
- One partner wrote the ToC and outline.
- Another partner wrote questions for each section in the outline.
- I interviewed two of the partners in a Zoom call, where we had a structured conversation around those questions.
- That Zoom meeting got written into a chapter (for you, this could be a ghostwriter, staff member, or author).
- The team edited and read the manuscript with our chief creative officer creating the formatting, cover, and any other creative. He also published on Amazon.
If you’re publishing monthly, consider turning that content into a book.
Usually, this works best when your content schedule follows your proposed book outline, which means a little planning is in order.
If you’re willing to get help, there’s no reason you can’t write a book, as long as you’re willing to share your experience and maybe your process with the world either by writing or verbally sharing your insights in a podcast.
The Whole Enchilada
Although you can write a book with a content strategy, to get the most from your money, make sure…
- You’re ready to create thought leadership. If you’re new to the industry, this might not be the move right now.
- You know your brand. Usually, this means a branding process that’s meant to solidify your values, personality traits, and brand story, as well as verbal and visual guidelines. It’s nice to have that all figured out before you write an entire book and have to go back and make heavy edits because it lacks consistency. Obviously, we can help.
- Know how your brand strategy works with your book. This means a content planning workshop where you define the book you want to write, including a mind map of chapters. You then create the plan to create content for the book on a monthly schedule. That schedule becomes the content plan and can be published as a blog post roughly summarizing the chapter, an email, and social posts that all link back to the blog post.
Write Your Book, Monthly
Some people pay for a monthly content strategy without a book at the end, and it’s still worth it. The real magic happens when you plan your content with your book’s table of contents in mind.
This gives you monthly content that will build your thought leadership and a book you can send your clients at the end.
And when you’ve shared your approach to your industry, and people start seeing it as the gold standard, everyone else looks like second-best.
