In nearly ten years of working with clients on writing and publishing
strategies, the best example of this I have seen was a young speaker and
author who needed to get a lot of exposure quickly. We built a content plan
with all of his objectives in mind, and highlighted right on the plan which
items were intended to be articles, which were ebooks that stood on their
own, and which were the beginning of keynote speeches. In the course of six
months, he released 20 articles, a regular blog, three ebooks, one
full-length book and several speeches of different lengths. And the best
thing about it was that all of the messages hung together and supported each
other, since they were part of the original plan.
If you already have materials in the market, of course you can look at
new ways to package them up, creating extra products and marketing tools.
You can also start, wherever you are now, a new plan of deliverables for the
next six to twelve months. From my experience, here is the quickest and
easiest way to do this:
1. Identify your desired outcomes. Typically these are in the broad areas
of awareness, influence and action. For example, do you want people to know
about you, sign up to your list or buy something?
2. Give each of the outcomes a timescale. This is really important and it
will guide you in terms of what to release into the market, and when.
3. Look at the characteristics of your target market and ask yourself
what they would really prefer. For example, if you have a primarily younger
market, they usually want more online and fewer offline products.
4. Create a shortlist of products (such as ebooks, articles, books and
speeches) that will help you reach the outcomes you identified and are
suitable for the market you identified. Aim for two to three under each
area.
5. Finally, plan your content. Start with a core message that you want to
put out into the market. This message will run through everything you
create, so take your time with it and get help and advice if you need it.
Then, create lower level messages that will help you drive your main message
home. Look at the scope of these messages and determine how much you have to
say about each one. The ‘meatier’ ones will probably give you enough
material for an ebook or even a slim book in print. Minor ones can be
articles, blogs or short podcasts.
Be disciplined and rigorous with your planning, and it will support you
as you build your message and your profile as someone who knows what they
are talking about. This kind of planning can be done anytime; I just find
that it is more efficient to do it as early as possible so you can release
the right products and messages into the market in the right way and at the
right time. You get a whole lot of efficiency and a fabulous big picture so
you know exactly where you’re heading. And you shouldn’t need to spend
valuable time ‘re-purposing’ anything.
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Mindy Gibbins-Klein is best known as The Book Midwife (TM) an
international speaker, writing and publishing strategist and leading book
coach who has helped over 100 experts write and publish books, 12 of them
bestsellers.
Mindy Gibbins-Klein International Speaker Thought Leadership Strategist
Founder of
The Book Midwife Co-Founder and Director of
Ecademy Press
T: +44 (0)845 003 8848 M: +44 (0)7764 163312
