7 Steps to Boosting Your Business as an Expert Author

A book is the best business card you can hand to potential customers and clients. It might as well say, “I’m the expert on this subject,” right on the cover, which is why becoming an author sends people flocking to do business with you.

A book serves as an excellent expert platform element for an entrepreneur. Becoming an author can help you start building a new business or boost an existing one.

If you conduct business online—or even have a website for the purpose of maintaining an online presence, a book can be the needle mover when it comes to developing discoverability and credibility. Plus, if your site has a blog, the combination of blog plus book can mean a huge difference in traffic for almost any business, but in particular for service-oriented businesspeople like coaches and speakers.

What Books Boost or Create Business?

To boost or create business, write a book your ideal customers and clients want and need. Make sure it is unique in the category and showcases your knowledge and experience.

To determine your book’s subject and content, answer these three questions:

1. What question do my customers or clients most need answered?
2. What problems do my customers or clients most need solved?
3. What pain do my clients most need eliminated?

When your book provides one or more of those things, your ideal customers and clients begin to trust and perceive you as an authority on the topic. Not only that, they also will see you as the go-to person to help them, which means they will seek out your products and services.

Write Your Authority Building Book

Now it’s time to write your authority building book. To do so, ask yourself the following questions:

1. What content can I produce? Brainstorm the content for your book. Create content that provides value or benefit to your target market. Provide the answer, solutions and prescriptions you uncovered when you answered the first three questions (above).
2. What content can you repurpose? It’s possible that you have already written part of your book. If you’ve published articles or blog posts, the making of a book might be in that content. Maybe you’ve been participating in groups on Facebook, LinkedIn or Google Plus; your comments and replies to other’s updates include the answers, solutions or prescriptions that form the foundation of a book. Possibly you’ve written some reports, newsletters or white papers. These might be fodder for a book as well. Never underestimate the power of repurposing the written work you have already completed.
3. What help do you need getting your book written and published? If you are a busy coach, consultant, speaker, or healer of some type, writing and publishing might not be your dream. Instead, it’s simply a business strategy. As such, you might want to subcontract out some of the tasks. You can hire ghostwriters, book and author coaches, editors, designers, formatters, and virtual assistants. If you want help writing and publishing your book, you can find it. Or you can learn to do by yourself much of what is necessary—with the exception of editing and design, which you should leave to professionals.
4. What publishing route do you want to take or which will best serve your business?* The backing of a traditional publisher will provide you with credibility if not additional income. (You earn fewer royalties from a traditionally published book.) In this case, however, income from book sales is not the reason for writing and publishing a book. You are doing so to establish your expert status. You can do that with a self-published book as well, especially if your audience doesn’t care how your book was published. Also, take into consideration whether you want to run a fledgling publishing company and manage a team of publishing professionals; you will need to do both if you self-publish. Do you want control over your end product and are you in a hurry to have that product in your hand; if so, self-publishing might be a better option for you. And consider if a digital book will serve your purpose; you can’t physically give it to someone. If you want that book-as-a-business-card effect, you’ll want to produce a print book.

Once you have your book written and published, it’s time to make the most of your new author status. Send out press releases. Feature the book on your website. Write blog posts related to the book. Go out and speak on the topic. And by all means, give the book to your potential clients and customers.

If you need help figuring out how to write your authority building book, take advantage of the March Madness special on my blog coaching services.