#28: How to Write a book, blogs, eNewsletter, Keynote…all at the same time

This week’s Happy Hour Recap was filmed at The Happy Moose in Mentor, Ohio.

Working with Leadership-Initiatives.com‘s, Steve Reissig for several years: Steve was instrumental in implementing LEAN and Proj Manag. concepts at Honda, and has trained hundreds of others and dozens of other companies since with a large consulting firm. His qualifications as business consultant through the roof.

But, I always saw the need for strong content marketing and presentations – in other words, author of book, and keynote speeches.

Last year, Nancy Valent, NMV Strategies brought me in on Sandra Mobley’s (LearningAdvantageinc.com) branding/web development project. And she was launching exactly this.

Steve needed help assembling his training notes and personal exp into a book. So, I took an evening and wrote out a system.

1 week later, I was asked to do a Keynote myself, so I began using this system just as I instructed Steve — which will result in a 5 chapter book… and my keynote presentation, and this HH Recap series…

We preach a lot about “repurposing” your own high quality content. This is a system of doing that. Content Marketing Pyramid It can also be done from the ground up – Mark calls this a Content Marketing Plan.

Step 1 – Layout your outline

Title, 5 Chapters,  3-5 Chapter sections. You can start by making a text file that looks like this:

Step 2 – Name the book

The title, for starters, should just be an overall description. It will evolve. That’s ok. It will certainly have a catchier, emotionally-eliciting title in the end – which I’ll also address, but this is where we start.

In our example, we’ll start with,

“5 Things You Can Do Now To Improve Your Website”

Step 3 – Define Your Chapters

• defeat “writer’s block” – Google your book title. Great results on page 1, as Google’s algorithms are based upon credibility. This isn’t about plagiarism, its about resource gathering.

• “Alt click” on the results that resonate with you the most – they’ll come up in individual tabs – then start with the first article and find an idea that makes you salivate. That’s Chapter 1

• “Control/Command click” on the results that resonate with you the most – they’ll come up in individual tabs – then start with the first article and find an idea that makes you salivate. That’s Chapter 1. Bookmark this link and write this subject into your notes – complete with the link. This is Chapter 1.

*** I say, copy the link into your notes because if you use this person’s ideas verbatim, you have to give credit within your book (with link), and this is excellent writing etiquette and helps you build valuable relationships and credibility as an expert in your field.

Move onto the next article (tab) to find your next Chapter. Proceed until you have all Chapters and appropriate links recorded in your notes (you may need to go back and open up more pages from search results- why we used tabs). You may have to scour through 15-20 articles before you find sources that you deem valuable enough to use.

I went through probably 12 individual pages before I arrived at my 5 book chapters”

Chapter 1:   Assessing Your Brand

Chapter 2:  Assessing Your Blog

Chapter 3: Brush up on basic SEO skills

Chapter 4:  Integrate blogs/social media/eNewsletters

Chapter 5:  Email List Integration

My Outline now looks like this:

Step 4:  Defining our Sections for our Chapters.

Now that you’ve chosen the appropriate subject matter for your Chapters, we need to create 3 – 5 sections that flush out your ideas. Many of us will already be stimulated enough to begin writing most of these sections because we’re so passionate and knowledgeable in our fields. But many of us lack writing practice and confidence and therefore, still need to take the “researchers’s approach” – and there’s nothing wrong with that. People make entire careers out of this.

• Let’s go back to Chapter 1:   Assessing Your Brand  and it’s article and let’s find the most valid point that is in line with our beliefs. That’s Section 1.

• If a scan of the rest of the article doesn’t resonate with you, Google, Assessing Your Brand – again, Control/command-click on results that interest you, and repeat the steps that we used for the Chapters in order to find 3-5 sections that flush out the subject matter. Again copy/paste the URLs of the articles you liked for reference.

In our next episode, we will go over the structure for writing out your individual sections.