Do you want to generate more leads for your business? Write a book!

There are many important reasons why you should write a book, but today I want to focus on one of the most lucrative reasons: writing a book will generate more leads for your business.  Most people think that book sales are your main source of income after you publish a book, but often you’ll only break even after you pay for professional editing, design, etc.

Where your book really earns its keep is by bringing more customers to your business.

Many of your customers spend considerable time on Amazon looking for solutions to their business problems. You know that your business can provide just the right solution for some of those people, but they can’t find you if you don’t have a book published there. Fortunately, this is a problem easier to fix than you think.

Write Short Books with a Narrow Niche
First, don’t focus on writing one long, full-sized book similar to the business books on your shelf. Not only is that too daunting of a task, but it takes too long. For most of us, our brains work better handling one smaller task and seeing it through.

Focus instead on writing several smaller books with each one focusing on a narrow niche. A typical full-sized book might be as long as 60,000 words and cover a broad range of topics. Your strategy should be to write 3 or 4 books in the 15,000 to 20,000-word range.

Most readers today have a short attention span. We’ve grown up watching 30-minute sitcoms and 5-second sound bites, and now we’re into the era of short-form content on social media. Instead of complaining about the good old days, embrace digital media and use it to your advantage.

We’re also much more motivated to buy a book that focuses on our exact problem. Instead of writing a general book on networking, for example, instead write smaller books covering narrower niches such as “networking at conferences” or “networking at chamber of commerce get-togethers.” For someone who is especially interested in how to get the most from networking at their next conference, they’re going to be much more excited to buy your book titled, How to Network at Business Conferences than they are to buy a book titled, Learn How to Network.

The best way to get started writing a book that actually helps bring in more customers and grows your business is to choose your niche. Start with a broad niche, and then plan to write several short books with narrower sub-niches. For example, if your niche is mobile marketing, you might write books with titles such as, SMS Marketing Basics, Gain More Customers with Push Notifications, and In-Game Mobile Marketing. See how much more inviting those titles are versus something like, Mobile Marketing?

If you’re familiar at all with keywords, you’ll notice that these narrow niche titles are actually long tail keywords. These are keywords that are less searched for, but matched more closely to what someone might search for when they are ready to buy. The image to the left give the example of long tail keywords for buying coffee. Although you’ll find fewer people looking for your narrow niche titles, the ones that are looking are usually ready to buy. If you want to learn more about using keywords for your book, check out a small book I wrote called Choose Keywords That Sell More Books.

Now that you’ve chosen some titles to write, your next step is to start writing! Tips on how to do that as easily and painlessly and possible will be coming in future blog posts, so be sure to sign up below.