Posts tagged format

Writing a book isn’t enough #2

1
1 year ago
by Glen in , , , , ,

One of the basic rules of internet marketing is that you need traffic. Everything starts with the traffic. It’s like a bricks and mortar store. If people don’t come into the store it really doesn’t matter how good your product is, how competitive it is or anything else. Without the foot traffic you aren’t going to sell anything.

And it’s no different over the internet.

In order to have an audience — readers, course attendees etc. — you need the traffic. After all, not everyone who investigates what you offer is going to want to listen/read/watch it. You need enough people passing by in order to get enough people to stick around.

So how do you do that?

One of the best techniques is Article Marketing. Many traffic techniques drive traffic to your site. But it’s often the wrong type of traffic. And that just chews up bandwidth and money. Article Marketing drives high quality traffic — traffic that sticks around and eventually buys.

Now, I’m no slacker when it comes to Article Marketing. But I’m also not the number one author on EzineArticles.com. My coach, Sean Mize is.

I’ve arranged with Sean to make his 6 MP3 audio series Article Marketing Advanced available to you. It will show you how to write articles that drive traffic that sticks, where to post your articles, and much, much more. You can find more information here.

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Creating Information Products But Which One? Part 4 – Cost

5
3 years ago
by Glen in

Sorry folks, but Thursday and Friday turned out to be busier than I could handle. So this article just ended up being a wee might late. :sad:  Sorry about that!

So far we’ve been kind of working up to one third of the decision matrix for identifying which information product you should create … Specifically the cost.

To a large extent I can’t tell you what the cost will be.

You see as I hinted at in the last posts, you need to answer the question for yourself.

Generally speaking the relationship between writing, video, live/slideshow, and audio are:

  • Text book (300+ pgs) = 1 week live seminar = 6 hrs finished Video = 12 hrs finished audio
  • Executive book (100-200 pgs) = 1 day live seminar = 1.5 hrs finished Video = 3 hrs finished audio
  • Article = 1-1/2 hour live seminar/webinar = 1/4 hr finished Video = 1/2 hr finished audio

HOWEVER, your own comparison will vary. First because you may be more or less comfortable speaking or writing. Writing is a very private task and as a result doesn’t take a great deal of practice to become comfortable. (It does take a lot of practice to become capable but that can’t happen until you are comfortable). Speaking – public or otherwise – does require a great deal of practice before you become comfortable.

To make matters worse speaking to a crowd is much easier than speaking to a camera. A crowd gives you feedback and energy. A camera gives you nothing. So practice for one doesn’t help you with practice for the other. In fact, practice for the crowd is more a matter of becoming confident and comfortable. Practice for the camera is a matter of becoming able to generate your own energy.

Then comes the matter of repurposing and other techniques such as interviews. It might seem that there is little extra cost involved in repurposing (e.g. video to audio to transcription), but as we’ll see in the next post, the costs are much higher than one will be told.

So all I can tell you is that you need to determine how much it will cost YOU to create the product in the various forms. Just remember to include all the costs including preparation, production and post production.

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Creating Learning Content – Choosing Topics

21
3 years ago
by Glen in

Okay, up to this point I’ve kind of kept to just how to books. After all, my book and course focus on how to books.

How to Write Your How To Book in 24 hrs or Less

… sort of obvious eh?

But what is a how to book? It’s just a particular form or media to carry learning content.

In other words, we happen to be using it to teach but we could as easily be using another format for teaching the same material.

In fact, we often want to.

Why?

Two principle reasons … other forms are easier to learn from and easier to generate. Duh? So why are we even bothering with books? The answer is twofold. First, some people need to have it in writing in order to learn (actually a small but important percentage).  But more importantly from the entrepreneur and consultant’s point of view, people value books more. Publish a book and gain instant credibility! A book needs to be one of the cornerstones of your expert marketing effort.

But that’s not the topic of this post. (Do some hunting … I’ve discussed it before and will again later.)

The point of all that is that some of the other types of learning content are like articles and blog posts. Short and quick and easy to get out. And really, really hungry for topics!

Man they just chew topics like CRAZY!

So how do you come up with topics for these topic munchers.  Now I’m not talking about the alternative forms of the material. That’s where the book is repeated in book, webinar, video and audio formats. I’m more talking about the small “articles” you’ll need around the topic for marketing purposes and blogs.

First start with your topic …. say writing how to books (self serving ain’t I?).

Then ask 7 to 9 questions about the topic that you think you’re audience might like to know.  Of course, asking your audience is the best way to create this list. And easier too! But you can create your own list by adding words and deleting words. Start your questions off with How, why, when, where, what, who. Try to concentrate on the things that would be important to your customers/audience. Things like money are always important.

So let’s say I make up the following list …

  1. How do I write how to books?
  2. Why should I write how to books?
  3. When should I write how to books?
  4. Where should I write how to books?
  5. What topics should I write how to books about?
  6. Who should write how to books?
  7. How can I make money writing how to books?
  8. How can I make a difference writing how to books?

Once you’ve got that list, you’ve should be able to pick out at least 5-7 which are suitable. By suitable I mean small and reasonably tight. After all “How do I write how to books?” kind of covers the whole topic! But doing a short summary might work.

Now take that list and come up with some related questions your audience might have about the topic.  Keep in mind Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

So for example, if I take “How do I write how to books?” and expand on that I might get

  1. How do I write well
  2. How do I develop topics
  3. How do I determine chapters
  4. How do I create a content map
  5. How do I determine what my audience really wants
  6. How do I make money with books
  7. How do I edit books

I could go on but you get the idea. By the time you finish the second level you’ll have at least 49 topics.  Now expand on those and you’ll be somewhere in the area of 343 topics.

See … there’s lots of topics. And I haven’t even mentioned the lists (top 10,  7 ways to, the 5 things you must know).

Of course, there’s one problem with this method.

Okay, two problems; the amount of work involved, and the fact that you may or may not hit the problems your reader is interested in.

If you ask your audience – and they bother to tell you — you’ll get a much better list of the problems they’re encountering.  Address those problems and you’ll have a much better list of topics.

The key is getting audience involvement.

Hint, hint!

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