E-books are useful for your business website. They’re great for giveaways, trust-building, and info guides for your visitors. But how can you write an e-book when you’re already busy running your business?
One of the simplest ways to write content for your e-book is to start with a top 10 list. Whatever topic you want to share, make a list of the top 10 things your visitors need to know about that topic. Write those 10 things down. For simplicity, I’m going to refer to those 10 things as your main topics.
Next, write five things people need to know about each of those 10 main topics. Don’t worry about full sentences yet. Just capture your ideas. What you have now is the outline for your e-book. Each of your 10 main topics is a chapter. Each of the five need-to-know ideas is a page. For simplicity, I’m going to call those five ideas your page topics.
Now that you’ve got those page topics written down under each main topic, I want you to focus on one page topic at a time. How can you help your reader understand that one page topic? Would you want to explain it? Give examples? Tell a story about it? Share wisdom? There’s no right or wrong answer. The question is how would you best explain it to someone sitting in front of you right now?
Go ahead and write (or record) what you would say. Keep going till you’ve given your reader the main takeaway for that particular idea. That’s a page of your e-book! Don’t edit yet; just get the content written down in whatever form it takes.
Repeat this process for each of your page topics. That will give you the content for your e-book. Now you can go through and lightly edit, tweaking anything that sounds awkward, filling in gaps, clarifying anything that might confuse your reader.
You’ve got it: the content for your e-book, ready to share.
Janet Eriksson 