I saw this guest post on Lifehacker this morning and thought it as a good chance to make a few comments on the growing realization that having our own book is the new business card these days…
Yes, your ebook, book, report or other information product does have these benefits:
- Instant branding – you become one of the leaders in your market very quickly
- New partnership and co-branding opportunities. Suddenly others with influence see you as important and treat you that way in the eyes of the market
- You open a new, powerful line of publicity
- You create a new line of income…information is extremely profitable and is nearly unlimited in potential
- Is a pre-requisite to getting interviews, speaking engagements, seminar gigs, etc…
- Sets the foundation for future opportunities to produce infoproducts
We have helped hundreds turn their desire to create products, write books and share information into tangible and digital information products through InfoMarketer’sZone – not once has anyone regretted the experience and often they were blown away by the response.
The Lifehacker article hit on some very important aspects of writing your own book:
- Choosing a topic you are passionate about is absolutely necessary in our experience
- Formulating your own unique angle (unique value proposition in old speak)
- Promotion – even the best books in the world require hard work and smart promotion
But here is a concept they DID NOT mention – that is as important, if not MORE important these days:
- Building your platform in ADVANCE of your book launch
Today, you have so many options of generating content that sets your market up for your book launch…
- YouTube for videos
- Ustream for live video streaming
- Facebook for building a following
- Twitter for building a network and chatting up your marketplace
- Your own blog that can go viral with syndicated content and comments
- Commenting on other authority blogs (I made one comment on an authority blog this morning that brought in nearly 100 new Twitter followers and dozens of list signups in under 2-hours!)
Look – if you can amass a few thousand followers, a blog with hundreds of readers daily, a mailing list of 5000 or more subscribers and thousands of watchers on video sites, then you have the start of a nice platform that can be leveraged with your effort to seek out publishers or to help with a self-published book launch.
So, even if you are not 100% sure on your book topic or haven’t written your ebook yet, go ahead and start building your platform right NOW!
