Ebook Marketing Guide for Bloggers, Authors and Content Writers

Although video marketing is gaining huge popularity on the internet by the day, the benefits of ebook marketing cannot be underrated. With a solid ebook promotion strategy in place, you can successfully and consistently generate targeted leads and prospects as well as close sales by leaps and bounds.

 

Whether you’re a blogger, author or content writer, you can create an ebook and take advantage of the content needs and gaps in the marketplace by providing your expert knowledge on a specific topic which will serve as the solution to what your target niche market is searching for.

 

The good news is that your electronic book (e-book for short) which you’ve created and uploaded on a web hosting server can be downloaded by anyone who has the link and access to it at any time of the day. For years to come, you’ll be able to use your published ebook online to reach out to your potential leads and/or retain customers in the industry where you are operating from.

 

For example, you can write an ebook on 31 side hustles to make money online. You can then give this ebook away for free to your prospects or readers with or without an opt-in form to fill out. Your goal may be to use the ebook to directly generate affiliate products sales or any other marketing goal you may have in mind.

But the take home here is a watertight ebook marketing campaign can considerably improve the bottom line of your business if done right.

 

Establish Your Ebook Marketing Goal

 

To get started, you’ve to establish your ebook marketing goal. As an author or writer, you’ve to begin with the end in mind. What do you hope to achieve with your ebook marketing campaign? Do you want to create brand awareness for your business? Do you want to generate leads through list building? Clearly bearing your goal in mind will help you to be laser focused on what to do.

 

For example, I may decide to write an ebook on 31 online side hustles to make money from home to help aspiring entrepreneurs with day jobs to start a business on the internet. This type of goal must consider the time constraints of day jobbers. Any side hustle business that will be included in this list must not take the whole day to accomplish.  

 

Design Buyer Persona for Your Ebook

 

Creating buyer persona for your ebook will make it easy to understand who your ideal readers are. Your goal is to appeal to a specific segment in the marketplace. Is your electronic book targeted at beginners, intermediate or advanced readers?

 

The demography of your potential prospects or customers must be clearly stated to avoid wasted efforts in your ebook marketing campaign. You should bear in mind that the buyer persona you’re creating is something more than just the profile of your ideal customer or reader.

 

Write Your Ebook

 

I’ve extensively discussed how to write an ebook in part one and part two which I published in my previous blog posts. You can read it up from the above links to get the lowdown on writing and selling ebooks online.

 

Create Ebook Marketing Plan

Now that you’ve created an ebook to sell or give away as a gift, it’s time to go to the drawing board to create a marketing plan to distribute it to your target readers. The idea is to reach as many people as possible who are interested in downloading it.

 

Firstly, draw up a list of websites that accept and allow PDF file sharing. Secondly, pencil down the category to upload your PDF in each of these websites.

 

Publish and Distribute Your Ebook

 

With a handy book marketing plan, you can go ahead to publish and distribute your electronic book to various sites especially if you’re using the ebook to create brand awareness, build trust and credibility or demonstrate authority or thought leadership on a topic or subject matter.

 

Some of the PDF file sharing sites include SlideShare.net, ISSUU.com, just to name a few.

 

 Promote Your Ebook

 

It’s not just enough to distribute your ebook to various websites and sit back to expect hordes of visitors to your blog or landing page. You’ve to go out of your way to use content marketing to create buzz about your ebook.

 

This is where you’ve to consistently blow your trumpet to your target audience. Let them know that your book is available to download after payment or exchange of email address if you’re building an email list of subscribers.

 

Measure, Analyze and Improve

 

You’ve to measure and analyze your return on marketing campaign so that you can improve in your future efforts. Making use of data analytics as early as possible will be helpful in this regard. Google Analytics and Googe Search Console are free tools to use.

How to Use Blogging and Content Marketing to Increase Your Website Traffic

If you’re aspiring to start a side hustle business or already have one, you can increase your website traffic, leads, prospects, referrals, sales and revenue by deploying and using blogging and content marketing strategies to achieve your goals. These two digital marketing tactics alone will positively impact on your bottom line by leaps and bounds.

 

As you may already know, the World Wide Web is powered by constant content and information about topics of interest to any target group of people at any point in time; be it videos, ebooks, audio, books, blog posts, podcasts, webinars, white papers, newsletters, and so on. So, you can tap into any or combination of these content formats and use it to create brand awareness and get clients consistently to your side hustle business for the long term.

 

In this blog post, I’ll walk you through the steps to successfully start a blog and make money and then use content marketing to propel and popularize your side hustle business in the web space.

 

Let’s get started and talk about blogging.

 

Blogging is all about building a blog website on the internet where you can regularly create and publish content around a topic you know enough of and be willing to share, teach and educate others about it. And to build a blog, there are tools and resources which you’ve to invest in and deploy. I’ll talk about this shortly.

 

The most important aspect of blogging is publishing content consistently. This is the area a lot of bloggers miss out and fail to succeed. As it were, a blog is like an online journal or diary where you can chronicle every content worth sharing with your target audience. To this end, it’s necessary for you to constantly interact with your blog readers by publishing topical articles on it so that you and your business will remain top of the mind.

 

What do you’ve to blog about?

 

It’s about what your target readers will be interested in reading and learning from you. In essence, you’re positioning yourself as a solution provider or problem solver before your followers and fans by answering their questions and/or solving their problems or pain points.

 

This is why before you get started, you’ve to conduct market research and keyword research to know the palpable content gaps, needs and opportunities which you’ll be able to serve in the marketplace before you create a blog.

 

For example, if you decide to run a personal finance blog where you’ll discuss, among other things, side hustle ideas, starting a business successfully, budgeting, investing, and building wealth, etc, you’ve to know where your potential audience are on the buyer’s journey so that you can write and publish specific content that will resonate with them. 

 

For you to create a blog on a self-hosted CMS (content management system) platform like WordPress.org, you’ve to register a domain name and buy web hosting. Any website hosting company which you decide to sign up with must support WordPress hosting to make it easy for you to set up your blog website seamlessly even if you’re a newbie or beginner.

 

I’ve been using HostGator web hosting to build websites and create blogs in different niche markets. They are quite affordable, reliable and they have excellent customer support in case you run into technical issues that need to be resolved by a professional sooner than later.

 

Click here to go to HostGator hosting official website and get web hosting for cheap

 

In addition, HostGator offers free domain name registration when you purchase website hosting from this link. Obviously, this is my affiliate link and if you use it to get web hosting, send me an email to request my premium blogging guide which will help you to start a blog and make money in a matter of weeks like a pro blogger.

 

The best part about blogging is that it’s interactive between you and your readers especially if you publish high quality content regularly. It’s blogging and content sharing that make the internet merry go round. Personally, blogging for money is my passion as long as I’m constantly delivering value to my target audience in every niche market I’m targeting.

 

Here are the basic steps to start a successful blog.

 

• Choose a niche market to target
• Research a niche topic to focus on
• Conduct keyword research to find profitable search queries to write content about
• Create a blog to get started
• Optimize your blog for on-page SEO
• Set up data analytics to measure website activities
• Regularly publish content on your blog targeting profitable keywords
• Monetize your blog to make money online
• Promote your blog and build backlinks
• Measure your web metrics and improve where necessary

 

In a nutshell, the above steps are the length and breadth of blogging, and anybody can do it. However, it takes time for your blog website to gain traction in your target niche market. You’ve to be exceptionally creative to stand out in the blogosphere in any niche today because of cutthroat competition. And you’ve to be patient too.

 

If you’re starting a blog to make money, you’ve to set your priorities right from the get-go. You’ve to optimize your blog for on-page SEO, target low competition but profitable long tail keyword phrases, regularly publish high quality content, promote your blog, build authority backlinks and connect with your prospects and leads anywhere they regularly congregate, build an email list of subscribers, and so on.

 

Blogging is a serious business and you’ve to treat it as such. There is a huge learning curve for you to navigate if you’re just getting started as a beginner. But you can be rest assured that it pays the bills ultimately if you can maintain a blog around a topic that people are eager to learn more from an expert like you.

 

A lot of successful bloggers have transformed their blogs which started with a humble beginning into mega businesses making millions of dollars yearly in revenue. They got speaking engagements, coaching and consulting briefs, joint ventures and partnership opportunities, book contracts, etc, just by starting a blog around their areas of expertise and experience and staying through.

 

You should know that your target audience will perceive you as an authority or thought leader on a subject matter over time if you take blogging as a business through regular content publication and updates.

 

The flexibility in blogging can make you go viral with a single blog post especially if you’re controversial or opinionated on a topic in a good sense of the word. This can generate a lot of comments from your readers, followers and fans and you’ll be able to interact with them and balance opinions on any subject matter at hand.

 

The most vital virtues you can hone as a blogger are charisma, uniqueness, expertise, having a listening ear and promptly answering questions you’re asked frequently. This can quickly turn your blog articles into user generated content that will create website activities and positive experience.

 

Blogging is an integral part of content marketing, and having an active blog in a niche market puts you light years ahead of other average bloggers. From your blog, you can build an email list of subscribers who will serve as a pool of ready buyers when you’ve a product or service to promote and sell to them.

 

Content Marketing

 

Content marketing is the bread and butter of internet marketing. Simply put, content marketing is the research, creation and distribution of content about a topic of interest to a target group of people by someone (blogger, marketer, webmaster, online business owner, writer, author, etc).

 

The goal of content marketing could be to engage readers, create brand awareness, generate leads and prospects, retain customers or clients, and so on. A good content marketer must have smattering of SEO, keyword research, list building and marketing automation.

 

Beyond this, you’ve to create content marketing strategy and a plan to execute it with a time frame in mind. You should be able to research the competition to discover content gaps which you’ve to fill and use it to get free targeted traffic from search engines like Google.

 

Knowing content marketing tools to use at every stage of the buyer’s journey is critical to your success as well. At the heart of marketing with content is story telling. Your major goal as a content marketer is to engage with your target audience and build trust and credibility so that it becomes easy for you to drive positive customer action.

 

Online shoppers hardly buy a product or service on the first day they are exposed to it. It takes about seven times or so for a product to be exposed to a prospect before he decides to open his wallet and pay for it. And a potential customer will only do business with a merchant or vendor who he knows, like and trust.  

 

In light of this, blogging and content marketing are the best and most viable strategies to get clients and customers to take the desired action. There is a lot of housekeeping details in planning and executing any content strategy.

 

You’ve to:

• Know your audience
• Research profitable keywords to target
• Create a content plan
• Write content to match every level of buyer persona
• Publish content at designated channels to attract website visitors
• Measure your metrics to evaluate areas that need improvements

 

Content Marketing with Personalization

 

A good content marketing campaign is when you integrate it with a list building software. This will help you to further follow up with blog readers who decide to join your mailing list and learn more about your business. 

Building a mailing list will give you the opportunity to personalize marketing messages through automation and gain customer’s attention. All in all, blogging and content marketing will remain the most profitable ways to improve your search engines rankings, nurture leads and drive targeted traffic from various sources to your blog website. And you can get started now!

 

How to Start Content Marketing and Grow Your Business Online

 

Content marketing is a veritable and viable way to grow your business online and increase the bottom line. So, investing money and quality time to create shareable and linkable content on your blog website and/or guest posting on third party websites is something you have to think of and consider right away.

 

First off, let’s get started with the fundamentals or basics of this topic so that you’ve a solid foundation to build on.

 

What is Content?

 

First and foremost and before I deep dive into content marketing process, I want you to know what content is. It’s simply a piece of text, visual, or both, which you decide to create about a topic idea as an expert in order to satisfy the wants and needs of your intended audience.  

 

It could simply be an answer to your target audience’s frequently asked questions (FAQs), solution to their problems or pain points, or a step by step guide on how to do something or complete a specific task.

 

Content can come in various formats such as blog post, video, podcast, ebook, white paper, an article, and so on. And having a successful digital marketing strategy in place will involve consistent creation, publication and marketing of high quality content to your target market in order to create and nurture a mutually beneficial relationship.

 

What is Content Marketing?

 

In its simplest definition, content marketing is the process of researching keywords which are targeting your potential customers’ pain points, creating content around these search queries, and distributing such content in places where your target audience congregate in order to create brand awareness, generate leads or close sales for your product, service or brand.

 

As a content marketer, you’ve to understand the customer journey in your niche market or industry so that you can effectively tailor your content to every stage of the buyer persona.  Do you know that content marketing is one of the best ways to grow an online business by leaps and bounds?

 

If you’re able to consistently create and publish high quality content on a timely basis, you stand to benefit immensely from your online marketing campaigns. As a matter of fact, content marketing is a mutually beneficial relationship between the content creator or brand and his intended audience.

 

Types of Content Marketing

 

There are different types of content marketing you’ve to learn and master in your digital marketing arsenal. I’ll briefly outline some of them below.

 

• Ebook
• Video
• Infographic
• Blog post
• Checklist
• Cheat sheet
• White papers
• Email newsletter
• Podcast
• Case study
• Presentation or slide
• Etc

 

Depending on what you think will resonate with your intended audience, you can effectively use any of the above content formats to market and grow your business online. However, you’ve to bear in mind that unique and high quality content which is timely delivered to your target audience are paramount to your success.

 

To add to that, you should not forget that variety is the spice of life when it comes to creating and publishing content which will consistently attract your prospects, leads and customers to your website. For instance, you should have an optimal mix of blog posts, videos, ebooks, infographics, email newsletter, etc used by your team to position your brand online as a thought leader.

 

To get you started so that you can hit the ground running in earnest, you’ve to follow the steps to content marketing which have worked well for me below.

 

Content Marketing Steps

 

1. Identify a target audience to serve.
2. Research pain points of your target audience.
3. Write down your content marketing goal for every piece of content you want to create.
4. Decide on the best type of content you want to create and publish which will solve the problems identified above.
5. Identify the right platform to distribute your content.
6. Promote your content.
7. Analyze, monitor and improve on your metrics and data.

 

Now, let me explain how to execute each of the above steps to content marketing which will help you to get the best bang from investing your money, time and efforts in writing content yourself or hiring a freelance writer to do it for you.

 

Step #1: Identify a Target Audience to Serve

 

Before you start creating content of any kind, you’ve to know who needs it i.e. who wants to consume your piece. Also, you’ve to know the stage in the customer journey where your potential readers are currently at. Having and understanding this information will help you to specifically tailor your content to the right group of people who are searching for the type of content you’ve to deliver.

 

For example, if you’re creating a guide for beginners on how to make money with affiliate marketing, you’ve to start from the very basics and move up from there. This is because your target market is beginners or newbies who want to learn how to start affiliate marketing business successfully.

 

This means you’ve to introduce and write about topics related to affiliate marketing business such as:

 

• What is affiliate marketing?
• Steps to start affiliate marketing.
• Affiliate marketing tools and resources
• Email marketing for beginners
• How to start a blog and make money
• And so on.

 

Step #2: Research Pain Points of Your Target Audience

 

Now that you’ve identified your target audience, it’s time to find out their pain points, challenges or problems which they are currently grappling with and desperate to solve. You may be able to execute this task in a number of ways. First, you can use keyword research tools to discover questions people are asking in your target niche market.

 

Secondly, you can use reliable email marketing software to build an email list of subscribers and then send your list members questionnaires to fill out about their problems and the type of solution they desire from an expert like you.

 

Thirdly, you can use third-party websites and tools to spot specific pain points which desperate buyers are searching for solutions on the internet based on their search queries and patterns. Such websites include AnswerThePublic.com, Quora.com, Google Trends, BuzzSumo.com, etc.   

 

The crux of the matter is your ability to spot pain points and create solutions in the form of content. And this is where you’ll have the golden opportunity to monetize your blog content by recommending complementary affiliate products or services or product you own.

 

Step #3: Write Down Your Content Marketing Goal

 

At this level, all you need to do is to write down your content marketing goal which will guard and help you to focus on vital areas in your content creation process. What exactly do you want to achieve when you finally publish your blog post, video or ebook? Do you want to use it to build an email list of subscribers from the scratch or create brand awareness for your business?

 

Or do you want to demonstrate your expertise in your target industry or seen as a thought leader? Having a content goal in mind will help you to create winning content of some kind.

 

Step #4: Decide on the Best Type of Content to Publish

 

Now that you’ve a clear goal for your content marketing to pursue, the next step is to decide on the best masterpiece to create and publish. If you’re creating a blog for your business, you can regularly write blog posts around topic ideas and publish on your blog website.

 

But if you’re building a mailing list, the best option is to write an ebook or create a video to give away for free in exchange for subscribers email addresses. You may have to conduct competitors’ analysis to determine what is resonating with your target audience.

 

On another note, your potential readers and customer avatar should highly influence how you write your content. Top of the funnel (TOFU), middle of the funnel (MOFU) and bottom of the funnel (BOFU) are distinct stages of the buyer persona which you’ve to consider when creating content for your readers.

 

Before you write content of any type, you should get familiar with SEO (search engine optimization) and keyword research. These aspects of digital marketing will help you to scale your online business using search engines to generate free targeted traffic to your website.

 

Targeting long tail keywords have always been the fastest and best way to rank a web page on SERP (search engine results page) if your content is of high quality.

 

Step #5: Identify the Right Platform to Distribute Your Content

 

At this point, your content is ready for publication. What next? If you’ve written SEO article targeting a keyword phrase and you own a blog, you can simply turn it to a blog post and publish it. If it’s an ebook, you can upload it to your web hosting server and use it to start building a list of subscribers.

 

You should look into the option of distributing content on your social media accounts such as Facebook, LinkedIn, PDF sharing sites, and so on. However, for you to be highly successful as a content creator, you’ve to create a blog of your own preferably with self-hosted WordPress CMS platform.

 

Step #6: Promote Your Content

 

Unless you actively promote your website content, you may not be able to generate sufficient revenue to cover the costs of running and growing your business online. To this end, you’ve to learn a number of ways to promote your content on the internet. I’ll list some of them below.

 

1. Blogging
2. Guest posting 
3.  Creating and sharing videos
4. Social media marketing
5. List building
6. Search engine optimization
7. Etc

 

Mastering the above digital marketing methods will be of immense value to your business especially if you mix it with SEO and keyword research.

 

Step #7: Analyze, Monitor and Improve on Your Metrics and Data

 

The last step in our content marketing strategy is analyzing, monitoring and improving on your metrics and data. If you hope to get the best from your online marketing campaigns, you’ve to integrate analytics to measure website traffic and know where to improve on.

 

The very first step to get you started is to sign up for free Google Analytics and Google Search Console. You’ll be amazed at a number of data you’ll be able to generate about your target audience and how best to serve them with high quality content.

 

You can start content marketing today for your business and get better results by engaging our digital marketing agency right away. You’ll thank me later!