3 Key Things I’ve Learnt While Writing & Publishing My First eBook
If you’ve been following our blog or our website for a while know, then you’ve probably seen Kontra published its first eBook. Yay for us! It’s a beginner’s guide for Facebook advertising and we’re very proud of it. In fact, we plan to write advanced version, for you’ll have to wait a bit for that. Also, there’s a lot of idea cooking in our brains so don’t be surprised with eBooks covering other topics about digital marketing, development, graphic design and more. Basically, we love eBooks – reading them as well as writing them.
For me personally this has been quite an exciting journey. Ever since I was a kid, I was a bookworm. I loved books even before I could read by myself and my favorite pastime was to spend time at the library (yeah, Hermione Granger would be proud). So when the opportunity came knocking on my door, I answered – or to be more precise, when my bosses at agency asked me if I could write an eBook about Facebook advertising, I said yes. The process of write took me whole three months which might seem quite short to some of you while others might think it’s too long and you’re probably wondering why the hell it took me so long. Well, here’s the thing: we’re all different and don’t operate the same way as other. Apart from that, if you work in digital marketing, then you probably know how often Facebook changes its features and how important it is to stay up to date with ever novelty, to test it before implementing it into your marketing strategy etc. With all that in mind, I really wanted this eBook to look like something I can really stand behind and be proud of. It was also a learning experience so here are 3 key things I’ve learnt from it and, hopefully, they can be of you to others as well if they decide to write their own eBook as well.
#1 The core purpose
What’s the main reason you’re writing your book? Just so you could write in your bio that you’ve published a book or put it in your CV? Or maybe there’s something deeper behind your desire to write eBook? In our case, we wanted to create content with value which we’ll help us get more leads that we’ll (hopefully) convert into customers and/or clients. Also, since our Ilija is holding quite a lot of seminars and conferences, attendants are often interested in additional materials after listening to his lectures so our eBook is a great starting point for such people to broaden their basic knowledge of Facebook advertising. We explained everything, step by step, how to create campaigns, ad sets and adverts because we really wanted anyone who downloads our eBook to understand the meaning and purpose of every aspect on Facebook advertising. The core purpose was our desire to help people understand great results Facebook advertising can bring to company, brand or and individual if they do it correctly.
#2 Know who your audience is
So like I’ve previously mentioned, one of the reason we wanted to publish this eBook was because it’s a great tool for collecting leads and if you know anything about inbound marketing, then I’m sure you’re well aware of the full importance that leads have. Therefore, it’s important to ensued your eBook meets their needs. To do that, you need to know who your audience is: who would be interested in this eBook? Why would they want to download it? Will it grab their attention? Make sure your eBooks is built around a benefit the reader will receive. Obviously, you as a writer want some benefit from that as well, but you’re not going to get it if content of your eBook doesn’t reflect interests of your audience.
So how do you find out what your audience wants? Ask them! Track what most read articles are on your blog. Read all hot topics on other people’s blogs and monitor what gets most attention. See if you can as a twist on some universal topic with your unique touch.
In our case, we noticed most of our clients ask us about Facebook advertising the most and that they are more interested in it than, for example, in organic benefits of Facebook posts. Now, we have an eBook that helps them understand what we do for them, how, why and which benefits they have out of it.
#3 Give value to your content
At first, I wanted to write “an ultimate guide for advertising on Facebook”. Then I’ve realized it’s not going to work because it would be too wide. Instead, I’ve decided that, since it’s our first English eBook, we should choose a specific topic and stick to it. Cover our theme the best we can and know how. That’s how I’ve left out the advanced part of Facebook advertising and just focused on beginners’ guide. This allowed me to be more straightforward and stay on track everything I wanted to mention and explain in my chapters. That way, I offered our readers a lot more value to the content they’ve downloaded and it’s definitely a lot more comprehensive that it was in the first draft where I mixed in beginners and advanced guide into one. Honestly, I would like something like this was available for free reading back when I first started doing Facebook advertising because it’s not overwhelming and, as a reader, you don’t think of advertising on Facebook and astrophysics – instead, it looks interesting, valuable and it lures you in.
