One metric that's used to determine the success of your online presence is “conversion.” It refers to how many people that find you online are converted into prospects and ultimately how many prospects are converted into buying customers.
A huge component of conversion is your credibility in the user's eyes. One of the best ways to boost your credibility both online and offline is to write a book. Before you jump ship and decide this is beyond your ability, time, or any other excuse, let’s first take a look at an abbreviated way to write a book.
Your goal is not to sell a million copies or become a novelist; the point is to build credibility and people give mounds of credibility to authors. [Well, not counting James Frey —ed.] The overall gist of your book should be about what you do, your business, and how you help your clients. The goal is not perfection or a novel that you can’t put down; you are simply striving to have a published book about you, your company and your services.
Here are six quick steps to make it happen:
1. Create an outline. Keep it simple. Target 10 topics with two to three subtopics each. Add any facts, stats or stories to support your information.
2. Record audio of you walking through your outline. While you record this outline, mention important information like “insert an image here” or “find study online to back up statistic.” Your target recording length for a 220-page book is four hours of audio.
3. Take that recording and send it to a ghostwriter. We found our ghostwriter on elance.com and for $2,500 they took our audio and in less than six weeks sent us a completed 200-page book.
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4. Send your book to an editor and designer to make it look pretty. Do not use your cousin’s nephew’s friend who took a design class in high school. Elance.com is a great resource for finding someone to design your cover.
5. Purchase an ISBN number and publish your book with Lightning Source or a similar self-publishing service.
6. Email everyone you know, add the book image and a link to purchase it to your website, and tell the world that you now have a book about your business.
This entire process should take three months from start to finish. You will be mostly finished after your recording. The rest of the project is you reviewing the work as it is completed.
Remember, done is better than perfect and you can always improve on the content as you go or in a second revision of a finished book if need be.
It goes a long way with people when they see you have written a book and adding this to your business will dramatically increase your conversion.
Jabez LeBret has authored three books and is a managing partner for Get Noticed Get Found. Over the last nine years he has delivered over 700 keynote addresses in five countries. His main area of expertise is managing Gen Y in the workplace, advanced Facebook strategies, LinkedIn strategies, Google+, SEO, local directory optimization, and online marketing. He recently relocated to Chicago.
