How NOT to Blog your Book

by | Jan 30, 2019 | Books, Content marketing, Writing

This is the final blog in a series called How to Brainstorm a Year’s Worth of Blog Topics in Four Hours. You can read the others in the series by clicking on this link.

Experts will warn you not to blog your book. They are right – AND wrong. There are ways to blog your book, and ways not to do so.

The upside of blogging your book

Blogging your book (and sending out the blogs via an e-newsletter) has some fabulous advantages.

 

  • Publishing 500 to 700 words weekly for a year or more is a much easier task than sitting down to write 45,000 words in a block.
  • You get feedback on the way. Some of your blogs will get a big response, and provide solid evidence for what resonates with your audience.
  • As you blog, you will build an audience for your book. People will follow you on social media. They will sign up for your newsletter. When you tell them you are writing a book, they will be excited about it and possibly pre-order it. Publishers sign up authors who have a big audience.

Don’t make these common mistakes

  1. Blog without a plan.
  2. Put your blogs into a book in the order they were written.
  3. Write one “kind” of a blog (see the three kinds below)
  4. Include only blogs in your book (and not any other new material.)
  5. Fail to structure your material for the book.
Want to get started on your book today?
Download the Ultimate Cheatsheet to Get Your Book Started.

The three kinds of blogs and how they help you develop your plan

Why. What. How. Every blog falls primarily into a single one of those categories. Of course, every blog has a little of each, if it is a good blog. But it is primarily one of these. This is a “how” blog. It’s all about how to blog your book without making stupid mistakes. But you’ll notice it has a little bit if why too (under the heading, the upside). And this section you are reading right now is “what”. I am talking about what different kind of blogs there are in the world.

But primarily, this is a ‘how’ blog.

Why does this matter? Because every book (in my experience) has three sections: Why, What and How. The why chapters are all about the problems your readers have that you can solve. Your reader knows you understand them very well when they read your “why” chapters. They will get new insights into their problems and how much pain they cause.

The what chapters are all about what you know. How, as an expert, is your knowledge different to others? What are you on about?

The how chapters show your readers how they can apply your knowledge to solve the problems they have, which you identified in the why chapters.

The quick and dirty plan to blog your book

Have a plan that includes writing all three types of blogs

If you write too many ‘how’ blogs (I am guilty as charged), you won’t have enough blogs for the why and what sections of your book. That is why you must have a plan before you start to blog your book. Your plan will include blogs in all three categories.

Mix up the different types of blogs through the year

You are going to pull together all the why blogs into one section of your book, but you don’t want to blog them that way. Keep it interesting for your readers with a mix of what, why and how.

Add new material

Your book must include new material, not only the blogs you have written through the year. And you might have to take bits out of your blogs to make chapters flow together better. Of course, if your loyal readers have been reading your blogs over the years, so you want to give them new material. (However, you’ll be amazed at how much they forget or miss.)

Structure your book

You need to link your blogs together into coherent chapters. Each chapter needs to be a single proposition with several subtopics that explain the idea and prove (in a respectful and compelling way) that your proposition is right. If your blogs are about 700 words each, you’ll need about six or seven of them per chapter. And your chapter will need an introduction and a conclusion.

Your whole book also needs an introduction and conclusion too. So, even if you do blog your book, you’ll need to set some time aside to get the manuscript in order and finished.

In a nutshell

Blogging your book is possible and must easier than sitting down to write 45,000 words as a block. But don’t make common mistakes. Instead, you plan your next 12 months worth of blogs from the start, write all three kinds of blogs, add material and organise the manuscript coherently at the end. Go forth and blog your book!

Want to get started on your book today?
Download the Ultimate Cheatsheet to Get Your Book Started.

This series of seven blogs solves the single biggest problem facing bloggers. That problem is not, as you might expect, getting started. It’s keeping going.

Most of us can pump out a blog or two. Sadly, that is not going to serve you. In fact, it will do you more harm than good. People will look at your website, see you haven’t blogged for three months (or years), and wonder if you are still in the game!

Bloggers stop writing because they run out of ideas. If you plan your blogs ahead, you will never run out of ideas. It will only take you 30 to 60 minutes to write your blog.

This blog series will show you how you can brainstorm an entire year’s worth of blogs in four hours!  You will never run out of ideas and will write your blog quickly and efficiently every time. And you can turn your blogs into a book at the end of a year.