Elevate Your Authority and Visibility Through Authorship

00:20 - Lynn (Host)

Hi, friends and future authors, welcome to another episode of Publishing for Professionals. This week's topic is how to enhance your visibility by writing a book. All right, so I would love to jump into today's topic, but before we do, we're going to go over a couple of things really quick. So welcome to Publishing for Professionals. My name is Linda Liquidy-Smarges. Thank you for joining me, if you're new. If you're not new, thank you for joining me. I'm so glad that you're here again for another episode of Publishing for Professionals. So welcome, welcome. Whether you're on YouTube or you're on one of the Publishing for Professionals audio listening as well, you can like and subscribe to the channel, so make sure to follow this.

01:03

Publishing for Prof for professionals. So today's topic is how writing a book exponentially increases your professional visibility and opens doors that may not have been there before, because a book will transform you from expert to authorities in ways you would never imagine, and it honestly makes you a rock star, right. So other credentials can't do unless it's like a TEDx talk, right? So like having a book and a TEDx talk. That's like a double header. That's amazing. If you can get both of those, that's absolutely super fabulous. If you have a TEDx talk coming up and you don't have a book, please reach out to me at writeforyoume. I can help you write a book in as little as three months because having that book for your TEDx talk is essential. All right, visibility, multiplier effect of authorship and strategic positioning. We're going to talk about that today because in today's crowded marketplace, a book is the ultimate differentiator that you can have. Okay, and by the end of this episode you'll understand why and how a book amplifies your reach and is going to create opportunities for you in your vertical. Okay, especially if you're a speaker. If you're a speaker, that's a no brainer. You want to have a book for sure, okay.

02:09

So on a personal note, I love working with clients to simplify their self-publishing process so they can publish their book and leverage their content to get more clients much faster, with less stress than if they were to write their book on their own. So if you're ready to get support with simplifying your book and writing, book writing and publishing, definitely hop on my discovery call calendar today by going to my website. It's wwwwriteforyoume. So let's start with our first part of our podcast today the authority implication effect of published authors. Okay, so I have an executive program that's called the Executive Authority Accelerator. That's made specifically for executives and C-suite executives who want to write a book while having content for their digital platforms, and so I do that simultaneously. So if you're an executive who is interested in that, definitely book a discovery. Call with me where you can sit down and chat for 15 minutes to see if we're a good fit. Call with me where we can sit down and chat for 15 minutes to see if we're a good fit.

03:05

And so the author changes everything. So what does having author on your bio change? Well, let me tell you first. It's like makes you feel all sparkly and fizzy inside, because when I think of myself as an author, that's the first thing I think of.

03:18

The psychological shift is huge because authors are perceived as top tier experts, even if someone hasn't written your book, and you tell them you're an author. That's very impressive to people and it puts a very good first impression on someone when you tell them you're an author. I mean, I tell people I'm a four-time author, which means I have written and published four of my own books. I'm publishing two more, so pretty soon I'm going to be a 6X author. I know people who are 12X authors, right, and someday I'll get there. It's just not going to be today. It's social proof at scale because your book is 24-7 credibility, validation of who you are and what you do. And the credential transcends industries, it transcends borders and your author designation appears in introductions and bios forever, so people are going to know that you're an author and differentiate you from other people who are not authors.

04:06

Okay, so you can have literally two consultants with the same exact experience. Even one has more experience than the other, but the one that has the book is going to win out as viewed as the expert over the other one every time, no matter what, unless the book cover is horrible. I think that's probably the only exception to that. All right. So the visibility multiplier across channels you get more media opportunities, more speaking engagements. You can get podcasts and reviews. You'll have social media authority because your content from your authors gets higher engagement. Right, you get better professional networking because books open doors in influential circles.

04:43

I know books use as calling cards is what 99% of my clients use their books for, and they would say like hey, I'm an author or hey, I do this. Here's my book. You can see what I do in my book and it creates warm leads as well, which is really important when you have your own business. Okay, so that pre-qualifying and warm up prospects is really an awesome reason to write a book in and of itself, all right. So there's a long-term compounding effect when you're an author. So, because books work for you 24-7, each reader becomes a potential advocate for your work and or what you do your services and that visibility exponentially over time builds and creates more opportunities for you in the future. Okay, and so there's a five year visibility trajectory for published authors. So, once you publish your book, typically in five years, that book is going to end in circulation, unless you're still marketing it or you can come out with a second edition as well. All right.

05:38

There's digital and traditional visibility. There's books compliment your online presence, right, and Amazon is the world's largest search engine for expertise. Your book needs to be on Amazon, okay, so you can have it on other places as well, but most people will buy your book through Amazon. You can also have it on your website. You can publish it through Lulu and other publishers, but there are SEO benefits of having a published book because that social you can get social media content from your book a lot of it, right. And also, too, just having that expertise and being an author is an SEO benefit just in and of itself. So all the numbers and data show that statistics on speaking fees increase for authors. You also get more speaking gigs if you're an author with a book obviously a book that goes along with what you're speaking on as a speaker. And media appearance rates before and after publication right, are completely different. Like, you're much, much more likely to get a media appearance if you have a book than if you don't. Client conversions with books are much higher than if you don't have a book, all right.

06:42

So the next topic we're going to talk about is strategic book positioning to get maximum visibility out of your book. So you want to choose topics that maximize visibility. So search around online on Amazon what are people writing about? You can also use AI as a tool to figure out, like, hey, what are people writing about in my space, right? But also double check that, because you don't know for sure if that is correct information or not. So make sure that you go and you see, you know, is this is what chat, gpt or Claude been telling me Correct?

07:12

So timely topics versus evergreen content like, is your, you know, is your four, four part framework evergreen, right? Can people use it, no matter what time? That they're going to use it now or 10 years from now or 50 years from now right? Or is it timely? Is it more of like hey, you need to use this right now like a social media or marketing book which is going to go out of print really fast because social media and marketing changes so fast, unless it's like an evergreen marketing of like certain things like email marketing always works, right. So, timely topics evergreen content, thought leadership positions what are your thought leadership positions you have that are going to attract attention? Do you have controversial content or contrarian viewpoints that can spark conversation? Maybe you have a problem solution framework that addresses urgent needs or pain points, especially if you have trying to use this book as a calling card for new clients, right, that's super important to have those in there.

08:06

How your book topic determines your visibility opportunities. So, depending on your book topic, that obviously will give you different visibility opportunities. So, title and subtitle optimization for discoverability okay, you want to look at SEO, like what are people finding on Amazon and what is coming up in just general searches and keywords? That prospect for media search, right? So, like, you want to use the keywords that people are looking for, right, clarity versus clear creativity. Name your book. This is a huge one, because a lot of times people think, oh, I'll make my book title this really obscure name and people will be like, oh, I wonder what that is and click on it and, honestly, my friends, they're not going to do that.

08:48

Now, if it's on a topic and the topic you know and it's clear what your topic's about and it's a little bit query title, then that's fine. But you don't want to make a title that people are not going to understand what it is or what it's used for. Like, for example, and this is a storefront, but it's the same concept with marketing, right, I was driving by this little town and there was this little corner store and it went out of business and I looked at the name of the business and it was something like Laser Llama, pacific Northwest. Bring my laser, my llama, in to get it lasered like hair laser. Like I don't know what that's about. Like I had no idea what that company did or that business did based on their name.

09:30

Okay, so, just like companies, okay, you have to have a book name that talks about your book. For example, my first book I put out is called the Guide to Traveling Gluten-Free. Clearly, people who are gluten-free and like to travel are going to want that book. I have another book that's called Sensible Senior Solutions. So, and it talks about so that clearly, if you're a senior and or if you're a Gen Xer like me and you're taking care of parents that need help and their parents are seniors, then that is a book for you.

09:59

Okay. So you need to clearly list your name of your book so that the title appeals to people. Who's going to appeal to? Another one I have is SEO, marketing for small business entrepreneurs. So clearly, that's for people who are starting a business or who have a small business, who want to learn about SEO and marketing. So make sure your book title is very clear and people can see from your book title what they're going to learn. So it has to explain your value proposition and your title is going to affect your speaking invitations and media features. So keep that in mind and you want to test titles with your target audience, so that's always good to do like a beta test, be like hey, put up a poll on Facebook.

10:39

I'm thinking of these four titles for my book. Which one do you think, which one do you like best and put comments below on why that's really important? Because sometimes the one you like the best isn't the one that your readers are going to like the best, and you want to pick the one the readers are going to like the best because your readers are buying your book, not you. Just keep that in mind, all right. So positioning yourself as a go-to expert is really important. You want to narrow your focus to dominate a niche category, and I talk about this a lot. So your niche category is that category that you're going to have. That is like a subcategory or a sub subcategory. So, like my travel book, free, right, it's a travel book, but clearly for people who have, who can't equal it, okay, so that's a niche in the travel industry. All right, you want to make sure that your specificity increases visibilities in the right circle so that you're promoting it in the right places and building thought leadership in those places as well. Okay, so you can also build in your book signature methodologies that become associated with you, like a four-part framework, or like one of my clients who she wrote a book called Build a Strong Podcast. That's Jennifer Longworth's book and she has a pyramid framework for building a strong podcast which we wrote about in her book. So all of those things are really important to have in your book.

11:54

Okay, your book format and length are always considerations, okay, so typical book is about 200 pages, which is about 40,000 words. Okay, and that's obviously a 12-point font and that's, you know, in Arial, so you can have it bigger, you can have it smaller. Depending on how big or small your book is is going to determine also your page size. So keep that in mind and the length is going to affect your credibility. So, for example, when I wrote my book Sensible Senior Solutions, I made sure to keep that around 200 pages, because anybody who has a senior and they're taking care of them, they don't want a big book. I saw another book online when I was doing my research and it was like caring for your parents and it was 653 pages. Now, if I'm caring for my parents, there's no way I'm going to buy that book, because I don't have time to read a 700 page book. So keep that in mind when you're doing your audience.

12:42

What I like to tell people is like shorter is better, but you don't have to make it shorter. But if you want to do a series of books, if you have a big idea, then break it down into a book series. That's always a better idea than to make, like, a 700 page book, because people typically do not want to read a 700 page book unless you're an established author and you've already been doing that. Then people expect it. That's different. But for something like a book that you're going to hand out for a calling card, I definitely would not recommend making a big, long book. Right, make it short that people can read on an airplane and consume really easily. Okay.

13:17

So let's talk about the next section, which is print versus ebook, an audio book for different audiences. You can also do hardcover. I recently had a client who wants to give away his book, so we're making a hardcover format for that specific purpose. Okay, so most people are going to buy an ebook. But you also want a print book, right? Because you want books that you can sell at expos, conferences and speaking engagements, which is a print book, and you can also have audio books. So Amazon has this automated audio book thing that you can create. However, you can only sell that on Amazon. You cannot sell it individually, so I always recommend get your own ISBN and create your own audio book, which is what I did for my Sensible Senior Solutions book. I hired Trenton Bennett, who is a voice actor who was on an earlier episode of Publishing for Professionals, and he did a fantastic job of my audio book for Sensible Senior Solutions. There is multiple formats that you can use, depending on what visibility channel you want to go to, but I always recommend that my clients do paperback and ebook, because those are the two basic ones, pretty much that everybody's going to want, and then audiobook would be the third one.

14:19

All right, so there are many different publishing paths you can take. You can do traditional publishing, you can do hybrid publishing, and the main difference between traditional and hybrid publishing is, with traditional publishing you have much less control over your creative process, for sure. Right, like they're going to say here's your book cover and that's pretty much it. You don't have really a choice on it unless you want to pay out of pocket for it, and that's really expensive Not to pay out of pocket for it, and that's really expensive Not to pay out of pocket for another book cover. But like, you're already spending money on your traditional publisher. And then there's that the traditional publishers will give you marketing money, but it depends on you know how good they think your book is going to sell your platform, all those things. There's a lot of restrictions to working with traditional publishers. So a hybrid publisher is similar to a traditional, but you have more wiggle room with your creative creativity. You can do more of your own creative stuff with a hybrid publisher. You're not you're not, like you know contracted with them for every little specific thing, so you do have more creative control with a hybrid publisher.

15:18

Of course, there's self-publishing, which is I always recommend people to do. No matter what you do, it doesn't really, if you self-publish, hybrid publish, traditional publish, that doesn't affect your speaking engagements and things like that. Like, no one's going to say like, oh, I'm not going to hire you for speaking because your book is self-published and not traditionally published. I've never heard of anybody doing that. You just need a book that looks professional and you can easily do that with self-publishing.

15:42

Okay, we're going to take a break right here, my friends. When we come back we're gonna talk about more on how to enhance your book visibility when you are writing a book. So stay tuned for more information on that. Hey friends and future authors, lynn Lickety, back for the other half of this episode today and we're talking about how to enhance your visibility by writing a book, and our next section is leveraging your book for media and speaking opportunities. Ok, so you can become a sought after media expert by building your media kit around your book and or, obviously, adding your book to your media kit, make sure you know what platforms to list yourself as an expert source, such as HARO, which is H-A-R-O and that's an acronym or source model. You can pitch yourself for podcast interviews on platforms such as Podmatch and you can approach journalists, producers, to be on news stories things like that, creating compelling story angles from your book and following up on media mentions for more exposure. Right to building those relationships with your media contacts. Converting authorship into speaking engagements okay, so event planners discover and vet speakers and if you have a book, that's even a better idea. So you can reach out to event planners once you have your book published or you know your publishing date of your book and use your book to command higher speaking fees, creating keynote topics for your book chapters and doing workshop training opportunities from your book content and then let people know they can buy your book for more information. And conference and industry event targeting is also really important. Okay, so you can also get on the Speaker Bureau or contact Speaker Bureau and find out how they evaluate authors.

17:37

All right, podcast guessing when you guess for a podcast, this is really important because I get people trying to get on my podcast all the time but they literally, literally have not even read my podcast description. Because I get people talking to me. They're like I want to tell you this great, dramatic story about how I overcame challenges and blah, blah, blah and I'm like, okay, but did you even read what my podcast is about? It's like my podcast isn't about overcoming challenges, right, my podcast is about publishing for professionals. So you may have a challenge you overcame in writing a book. That's great, I will have you on. But not a life challenge, right, that's not.

18:12

So make sure, if you have someone looking for you, that they're looking for the right type of podcasters. I always just recommend go on Podmatch it's Alex Sanfilippo's platform and it's really great. But also read the podcast description, listen to two or three episodes, see if they even take us. Not all podcasts take us. If they're on Podmatch. They do, but be respectful of the podcaster and you know, and return something in favor, like a podcast swap if you have a podcast, or like, hey, I'll write this blog for you or I'll write an article about you on my LinkedIn in exchange for interviewing me on your podcast, because it takes a lot of work to produce a podcast and people who just want to come on your podcast and not get anything in return is a harder sell. So just keep that in mind, ok. And then obviously you can repurpose and post your podcast appearance for social content and tag the podcaster who has recorded the podcast with you.

19:03

Okay, look for strategic collaborations and partnerships. Right, because books facilitate contributor opportunities. Co-authorship Right now I'm doing a joint venture with two other actually three other people on writing books. One of them is a fiction book and one of them is a nonfiction book. You can do corporate partnerships, consulting opportunities, university educational institution connections for writing books and promoting your book. One person I know who's an author one of my friends who's an author. She had a university teacher make her storytelling book part of the curriculum and so she sold like 30 books in a week, which is a really great idea, all right.

19:42

Social media visibility Using your book content for daily social posts is really important and it's really easy to do, okay. So taking behind the scenes book creation content or reader testimonials, using that as social proof on your social media, live Q&As and book discussions are always really valuable to increase your book sales and increase your book visibility and video content from book concepts. So I always tell people like I have my own podcast, get on your podcast and read about your book or make little video snippets of your book and read parts of your book, right, because it gives people an idea of what's in your book and why they should buy it. All right. The next spot where we go on is creating sustainable visibility systems around your book so you can repurpose your book for ongoing visibility, and I am a huge, huge, huge advocate for repurposing content.

20:29

One book can equal a hundred or more pieces of content, right, so it can be. You can get blog posts from your chapter, video series or video ideas, email newsletter content from your book. Insights, social media quotes, infographics, podcasts, episodes and webinars and online workshops can all come from your book so you can build your author platform systematically doing that strategy, a website optimization around your book. An email list building you can maybe offer someone a chapter of your book for free and then capture their email to get on your email list. Measurement and optimization so make sure you're tracking your visibility metrics see what matters, what doesn't matter, what's getting the best ROI on your visibility and your efforts for social media and other marketing that you're doing.

21:16

Okay, so sustain the momentum beyond launch. Okay, because people think like oh, I'll start marketing when I launch my book. You should ideally you should start marketing three months before you publish your book. Okay, so people know what's coming up, what you're doing with your book and how they can get a copy of it, especially if they can pre-order your book. Okay, so year-round, evergreen visibility tactics are always helpful for marketing your book, and that's how successful authors maintain their visibility years later is just by consistently marketing, which is a really hard job. So you may want to hire somebody to market your book. So if you do need somebody to market your book, please reach out to me. I can connect you with somebody to do long-term book marketing for you.

21:54

All, right, so let's recap today's episode. A book is the ultimate visibility tool for professionals, right? Nothing else comes close to that visibility as having a book and distinguishing yourself as an author, because it has a compound effect Visibility today creates opportunities tomorrow. And remember your three steps to enhance your visibility through a book is to define your unique positioning and expertise angle, map out your visibility goals and create your book concept that serves your expertise and visibility. Okay, okay, visibility excuse me, professionals whose visibility can be transformed through authorship. So make sure that you know that, my friends, like your visibility can be transferred through authorship, and also your expertise in the field and being seen as the number one thought leader transforms when you become an author. All right, my friends, I hope you're having a great week and until next week, this is Lynn Aliquity, reminding you to keep writing, keep dreaming and keep creating. Your book is waiting to be born.