The Outline for My Book
Earlier this week I interviewed Guy Kawasaki and during the taping of the interview (which, thanks so a software glitch has to be totally re-done!), I asked him for advice on writing my book.
As Guy has written 12 of them, I figured he’d be a fountain of knowledge on the topic (which he was) and after reading one chapter of his latest book, APE (affiliate link), I decided that before I get too far into writing my book, that I would post the outline of my book here on Bright Ideas so that I could get feedback from my audience on whether or not my outline was solid, or in need of improvement.
So with that in mind, I humbly share the first draft of my book’s outline (along with what Guy calls the book’s elevator pitch) with the hopes of your feedback.
Also, as my book doesn’t yet have a title, I would love to hear your suggestions. Just put your ideas down in the comments and if I pick yours, you will get a free copy of the book as well as a free hour of consulting with me to talk about whatever business issues you like.
My Elevator Pitch
The elevator pitch is meant to be used when pitching publishers, and while (at this point) I don’t intend to pitch any publishers (I plan to self-publish), I wrote my elevator pitch solely with the intent of clearly defining why, and for who, I was writing this book.
Why am I writing this book?
- To help small businesses get more leads and customers
- To help small businesses to automate more of their lead nurturing and sales processes
- To help me book speaking engagements
Who am I writing this book for?
- Small business owners will buy my training materials and/or use my affiliate links
- Companies that can pay me $10K for a day-long workshop
What action do I want them to take?
- Join my list
- Buy my products
- Hire me to consult
What Problems am I Helping them Solve?
- Not enough website traffic
- Conversions are too low
- Too many manual processes in the sales funnel
- Sales aren’t growing quickly enough
- Customer retention is too low
- Not enough referrals
Book Outline
Part One – Inbound Marketing
- How buying has changed
- The Power of free information
- The informed buyer
- Social proof
- Is Your website a marketing automation machine?
- Its not about you (define your avatar)
- The importance of blogging
- Give away your best stuff
- Become the wiki for your industry
- Help your visitors solve their problems first
- WordPress
- Content marketing
- How to know what to write
- How to create remarkable content
- Blogging
- Nuclear fuel
- Podcasting
- Video
- Curation
Part Two – Traffic
- Traffic Generation
- Google
- The Power of the long tail
- Authorship
- Social Media
- Engagement and listening
- Community
- Google+
- Networking with other bloggers
- Kindle
- Contests and Promotions
- Paid traffic
- Google
Part Three – Conversion
- Conversion
- Lead magnets
- Landing pages
- Split testing
- Measuring results
- List Building
- The value of a list
- Software Tools
- Sales funnels
- Nurturing
- Self segmentation
- Software tools for automation
Part Four – Keeping Tabs On Your Market
- Watching the Competition
- RSS and alerts
- Social profiles
- Why Do This Now?
What Do You Think?
Is this a book that you would want to read? Have you got any ideas for a title? Please leave your thoughts in the comments below.
