How to Create Lead Magnets with Your Book Content and AI

Hi friends and future authors, Lynn “Elikqitie” Smargis back with another episode of Publishing for Professionals. I am recording this on a Tuesday morning at my farm in the Pacific Northwest, just south of Portland Oregon, and I am excited today to bring to you a really hot topic, which is AI. But not just AI, but how to use AI to make lead magnets for your book content. Now I want to start off by saying and explicitly stating I am not talking about using AI to write your book. That is not something I encourage and is not something I would recommend, because that is copyright infringement and you're also using other people's content as your own. So, from an ethical standpoint, it's not right and any of those companies that are out there advertising that you can, you know, write a book in just minutes and put it on Amazon. There is a lot more to writing a book than asking AI for some stuff, putting it in a document and putting it on Amazon. There are many different steps and they don't tell you that in those programs, like formatting and writing the front matter and the back matter, the about the author, like all of those things which an AI cannot do. So, yeah, so there's a lot of steps and it's way more complicated than that. They just wanna sell you a program that is going to write your book in minutes, so you don't have to put a lot of work into being an author, and honestly, I would not respect any author if that was their only book. That's just not okay. Or an author who just writes books using AI, because that's not okay either. Ai is a fabulous tool and that is how I'm going to show you how to use it. Today, and that is the focus of this episode is not using AI to write your book. It's about using AI for the material you've already written to make some fabulous lead magnets for book marketing and things like that. All right.

02:18

So let's get started by talking about how to transform your book into lead magnets for your readers. So first of all, let's talk about what's the purpose of a lead magnet. So if you're like hmm, lynn, I am not even sure what a lead magnet is, let me fill you in. You have probably most likely unless you have been living in a cave for the past decade have downloaded or have received a lead magnet at some point. So for the lead magnet, they are basically a little freebie you're going to give away. So, in order to exchange the person's email address, you give them something free in return, and there's many, many different lead magnets, so we're going to go over the types of lead magnets you can offer. I'm not going to go into deep dive on how to create each lead magnet, but just an idea of what you can create using AI and your own bookmark, your own book material.

03:19

Okay, so lead magnets what they do is you give that person something, the consumer something for free, and they give you their email. And why is that important? Because you want to build your email list. Even though everybody's on social media, whatever, email is still the best way to market, even though it's one of the oldest forms of digital marketing. Right, you have their attention. They're not distracted by scrolling or anything else marketing. Right, you have their attention, they're not distracted by scrolling or anything else. So, and it has definitely been one of my most effective ways to market, just in general Okay, not even just besides you know marketing a book, so you want to build relationships with your readers before they buy your book, and this helps to do that, and it's also an asset that works for you no matter what right so like, no matter what time of day it is.

04:06

A lead magnet can work for you because it's digital and you don't have to sit there and create something new. It's just automatically sent to the other person. Okay, and what I like to tell my clients is that if you're going to make a lead magnet, it's a really good idea to make a advertisement in the front of your book with a QR code that leads to that lead magnet, whether that's Linktree or another specific QR code, because the reason for that is is that, even if the person doesn't buy your book, amazon's preview is going to show them that advertisement page with your QR code and then they can scan it with their phone, download your lead magnet even if they don't publish your book. Okay, so you can get somebody on your email list even if they don't purchase your book with that QR code. That being said, you have to make sure that your QR code is kept up to date, so that's why I like to use Linktree that way, when my links change, not if and depending on what I'm doing if I'm going to a podcast conference or a book conference or what it is I can easily turn off and on links on my qr code and not have to worry about changing the code. Okay, so I don't need like a separate code for my community page and a separate code for my lead magnet. With linktree and similar types of programs, you have all of your links on one code, which makes it super easy for people to access different things and easy for you as a content creator, because then you don't have to keep wondering where is this QR code for this specific link. Everything's on one QR code, which makes it really easy, all right.

05:41

So first of all, let's talk about what type of book content is really great for making lead magnets. Now, obviously, you can make a lead magnet from any type of book content. Okay, so this is just a general idea. Obviously, this is not every idea, so if you can come up with a different idea that I haven't mentioned before, please make sure to put it in the comments, because I would love to know new ideas on what types of lead magnets you created using your book content and AI. So some of the different types of book content that you have made or created that works really well as a lead magnet are frameworks and models. So a recent book I created with Jen Longworth from Bourbon Barrel Podcasting was build a strong podcast, and so with that she has a framework which is called the podcast pyramid for building your podcast. She can use that to make that into a lead magnet. I don't know if she has, so, jen, if you're listening to this, you might want to do that, but that's an actual, really great way. Another one of my clients who did book editing for, alex Trremble. He had a 4-H model for networking, right, that is a model that he has turned into a lead magnet.

06:52

Self-assessments and diagnostics. Everybody loves the self-assessments, the quizzes, that kind of things any type of diagnostic where you're finding out more about a person. These are fabulous lead magnets to that information because not only are you getting their email, but you can also put like a little survey or quiz and you're getting data to find out what people really want, and that's really important for marketing purposes. A step-by-step process, a calendar or a worksheet that you've already created in your book, a checklist which can easily just be transferred into a lead magnet. You don't really have to do anything to that. You don't need AI to transfer your checklist into a checklist.

07:33

Key insights, pro tips. I like to make pro tips on a lot of my nonfiction books. So it'll be a chapter and then it'll be a pro tip. So we did that with Jen Longworth's book Build a Strong Podcast, excuse me and so we had a pro tip on every chapter. Some chapter we had two pro tips. So a pro tip is basically like a highlight of something really important you need to mention and or not just mention it, but reiterate it because it's really important information, case studies. So if you have any case studies that you've done that's really great to turn into a lead magnet. Make sure it's your case study that you've done. Review or reflection questions Okay, you can use your book content to make if you already have review or reflection questions One of my current clients who is an interior decorator.

08:23

She has like the seven, seven things you, you, uh, which are great to decorate with inside your home, and she has plants and rocks and like all these different types of materials. So we're taking that and making it a lead magnet for people to use. Okay, so let's go over some general types of lead magnets you can make. No matter what kind of content you have, generally you can make these types of lead magnets. So a checklist is exactly what it sounds like, right? So one of my lead magnets I recently made with my book Nine Stumbling Blocks Preventing Creatives from Tapping into Grant Money, and I did that as a collaborative effort with Leo York and Danielle Meadow Danielle, danielle, no, I'm thinking Danielle Meadows yes, danielle, no, sorry, danielle Corbett. And we did a lead magnet as a checklist. We did a grant writing checklist. So that's a really great, easy way to make a lead magnet, a template okay, a template which is exactly what it sounds like.

09:27

So if somebody just has something they need to fill in and you make a template for them out of your content a guide or an ebook, so taking your book content and making it into a mini guide or a mini ebook, so you're not putting all of your information in that ebook. Maybe it's one chapter that you're making into an ebook, or maybe you're just taking your book and summarizing it and making it into an ebook. That you're making into an ebook, or maybe you're just taking your book and summarizing it and making it into an ebook, a mini course which you can offer for free, and or you can take your book and make it into a course, which I'm going to have a replay of a previous interview I did with one of my friends, lucas Marino, in the next few episodes. So make sure you hit the follow button because you don't want to miss my interview with Lucas Marino on how to take your book and make it into an online course, a calculator or a tool. So I have an ROI calculator on my website. That's actually not from a book, but you can take your content and make it into a calculator or a tool someone can use to apply to what they're doing A quiz or assessment, a webinar or a workshop.

10:25

Now, the webinar does not have to be a live webinar. It can be a pre-recorded webinar that someone can access at any time. So that's really easy because all you have to do is provide a link to that specific webinar, and you can do that many different ways. One of the ways you can do that is that you can actually just pre-record it on like StreamYard, like I do, or Zoom, and then just put it on YouTube and make it a private link so that it's not public. Only people can see it. If they have the link and they have to sign up, and then, once they sign up with your lead magnet form, then they would get that link and they can watch that webinar at any time. So it doesn't have to be a workshop. The workshop also can be pre-recorded. It doesn't have to be something at the schedule and do over and over.

11:11

And one of the really big points I want to make with lead magnets when you're creating them, is that this is something you are not doing a one-on-one consult for. I would never recommend doing that because that's going to take a lot of your time. But doing group things is fine because it is taking your time, but it can or doesn't have to. It can be prerecorded, like I said. But group things, because you're getting a lot of people at one stop. That works. But you don't want to do one-on-one stuff for your lead magnet, like offering a half an hour free of your time for a consult or whatever. That is Okay. That's not a good use of your time, okay. So we're going to take a break here. When we come back, we're going to talk about more on using AI to create lead magnets for your book. Hey friends and future authors, it's Lynn Aliquity smart. Just back for the second half of how to use AI to make a lead magnet for your book.

12:21

So we went over some different types of lead magnets in the first part, like checklists, templates, guides and ebooks, mini course calculators, tools, quiz assessment, webinar, workshop. Again, all of these can be pre-recorded and pre-done, and the purpose of lead magnet is to make it easily replicatable, that you don't have to be there to hand it out. Okay, that is automatic. Okay. So matching content types to lead magnet formats. So one is framework. So if you have a framework, a really great lead magnet for that is an infographic or a worksheet, okay. So if you have a framework saying like here's the here is the framework for how to add more people in your network, then you can make a framework or a worksheet that people can follow along and fill in, you know, as a guide. So that's a really good way to take your framework and make it into a lead magnet. Now, before we jump into more, I just want to say this is not set in stone. This is not like industry standards or whatever. These are just ideas that I'm putting out for you to use. Obviously, if you have a framework, you can make an ebook, a workshop or whatever out of that, but these are ones that are really ideal for transferring from your book content into a lead magnet that you can create OK process, so you have a process. A checklist or mini course is a really great way to transfer that into a lead magnet. Like I said with the book that Danielle Leo and I did the Stumbling Blocks, that is a process, so we made that into a checklist.

13:50

Okay, if you have stories in your book, a really great thing to do is to make those case studies right and case study collections. Obviously, you have to have some data on that too, so you want to make sure that you have some type of data in with your story Research. So, if you have some research that you've done in your book, a data visualization like an infographic or a quick guide, okay. So basically, like in the old school, we used to call them cliff notes, because these were actually cliff notes, were actually books that because I'm sure, like, if you are under 30, you probably don't know what cliff notes are Uh, there were actually print books to give you, like all the main ideas of a story, and so our teachers would try to give us questions that weren't in the cliff notes versions of the books. So cliff notes was a company that published, like basically summaries of books, because we didn't obviously have ai to do it, and back in the 90s we didn't. In the 80s, we didn't have the internet to go and look for information on it. So, uh, if you have research, you can do cliff notes. Uh, if you have a, you can do a cliff notes. If you have a concept, you can do a cheat sheet, which is basically like a cliff notes too, or a reference card. Okay so, reference cards are really good if you have a concept or a concepts that you are talking about in your book. If you have an insight, a quote graphic or a tip sheet is a really good way to transfer that into a lead magnet.

15:08

Okay, so let's talk about process. So how are you going to do this, step by step, in order to take your book content and make it into a lead magnet using AI? Now, obviously, this is a process, right? So if I wanted to take this, I could turn this into a mini course or a checklist. If I were making this into a lead magnet, I could also turn this into a little webinar or make it part of a mini course.

15:34

Okay, so, first, obviously, you want to select your content. Okay, what content You'll need to decide ahead of time and put a little bit of thought into this. Okay, what content are you going to use? And I always recommend to my clients what is the biggest pain point people have, in other words, like what do people ask you about the most? One of my things is people always ask me what does a ghostwriter do? And so that's why I made the last episode on what is a ghostwriter, and I believe it's only on audio version. So if you're on YouTube, I also have a YouTube video already set up for that.

16:09

Okay so first the process is one select your content. Two is you're going to reformat, you're going to transform your content into whatever structured, uh, format you're going to make for your lead magnet. And then the third is you're going to enhance it, either adding complimentary examples, resources or images to your lead magnet, and typically what I do is I um, oh, and then sorry, let me move on. So design assistants. Okay, so you're going to create visuals and graphics and templates, and so I always use Canva. Canva has a great AI, graphic, ai built into it, and so what I do typically is I will pick my content, I will put it in a separate Google doc, like copy and paste it, and then I will take that content, put it into AI and then ask it hey, from my content, please make a checklist. Or from my content, build me out an outline for a course. Or from this content, please create a mini guide. So whatever it is, I take it and I put it into AI and then I ask it to make a specific lead magnet from it.

17:12

Now, one of the things you want to remember when you're prompting AI is the more detailed you can make it, the better answer it's going to give you. Okay. So you don't want to just say, hey, make a checklist. You want to say, make a checklist that focuses on blah, blah, blah and also is in this tone and style of voice. So maybe you want it to be casual, maybe you want it to be business, formal, style or tone and whatever other details that you want to add into that checklist. And, of course, if AI doesn't come out with something you really like in the first place, then you can always ask it to reprompt it to do something different or something additional, or to summarize it more, to make it shorter, or to add more details and make it longer. Summarize it more to make it shorter or to add more details and make it longer, okay. So repurposing, so you can generate different variations of your lead magnet using AI. So if you want to make, maybe, a webinar and a mini course, you can do both right, and you can actually use that webinar in your mini course with using, taking your content and putting it into AI.

18:17

All right, and last but not least, please, please, please, my friends, never, ever, no matter what you're doing with AI, just copy and paste it into something and say it's good. You always need to read it. You always want to rewrite it. Even the best prompt and the best content on AI needs editing, because sometimes AI uses words that I don't like Like.

18:37

The other day I was using it to, I took some of my content and put it in there to make a. It wasn't a lead magnet, it was a summary of my work and it came up with the word probing questions. I don't like probing questions. When I think of probing questions, I think of like aliens coming down and kidnapping people, that kind of thing. I'm like no, no, no, no, no. That's not a visualization and I'm sure like improving is just not a really great positive word. Right, and obviously it was used correctly and it was grammatically correct. I just that is not my style, I don't use words like that.

19:10

So you need to really be aware of making sure you go in and edit that content, even if you you're not using, like, just ai to ask it a question and it's pulling up content, because that's obviously copyrighted, right. But even if you're using your own content, make sure you read through it, make sure you put it in a grammar checker. I had the paid version of grammarly. I just auto renew it because it is one of the best value tools out there that you can use as a writer or a creative. Okay, please, please, please, at least throw it through a grammar checker, because AI is not perfect and it doesn't make perfect grammar. Okay, and it also I've seen like just blatant grammar errors in AI. Okay, so AI, remember, is a tool you still have to put in work to do to make your finished product and to make it professional.

19:58

You don't want to show up with an AI piece that you have not edited, because what if it has some horrible mistake in it and you didn't read it and edit it and take it out and now you look unprofessional, okay, so make sure that you edit it for your style, your content, your voice and grammar. Please, please, please, grammar, edit it. That's one of my biggest things as a writer and editor is just to see people's work, and I mean honestly people like honestly, it's not just about the grammar, it's about you looking professional. It's not hard. Even if you can't afford an editor, Okay, use the free version of Grammarly and put your work in there. It will at least grammar check it for free. Now, it won't do a plagiarism check for free and there's other things it won't do, but we'll do basic grammar check. So there's no excuse for anybody to not have a basic grammar check. Now, does that mean that your text always has to be perfect and no grammar is ever wrong? No, but you don't want blatant grammar errors to be showing up. That looks very unprofessional.

20:55

All right, I'll get off my soapbox now, okay, so crafting effective AI prompts to make a good lead magnet is so, so, so important. Okay, if you just put your, you can just put your content in there and say make a checklist out of this. That's perfectly fine, but you're not going to get probably what you need, okay, or what you're looking for. So you want to be very specific, define the exact output format and purpose, okay. So I would like you to create a lead, not a lead magnet, a checklist lead magnet that shows my readers how to do blah, blah, blah. Okay, so make it very explicit as if you were explaining this to a friend. So pretend AI is your friend. And if you want to make a little face picture and put AI and make a name for your AI, you can do that too. That's kind of a fun way to do it, but do this as you were explaining this to a friend and that makes for a really good output.

21:50

Context provide relevant book background. So if it is a specific vertical or you're talking to a specific avatar list that Like if I am talking to women ages 40 to 55 about a topic such as menopause, okay, I'm going to list that. In my AI prompt I'm going to say please write this for women ages 40 through 55 who are going through menopause, or whatever your avatar is Okay, I'm going to list. I want you to write this focus travel checklist for millennials who are in between the ages of 20, whatever and 30 and who love to travel you going by airplane, okay. Or like to budget travel, or whatever it is Voice guidance include the writing samples if you want, but definitely tell it what type of voice and style you, whatever it is.

22:36

Voice guidance Include the writing samples if you want, but definitely tell it what type of voice and style you want it in. Was that business formal? Do you want it? Fun and catchy? Do you want it witty? Do you want it? What type of voice and style? And you can just search online about types of voices and style to use if you're not familiar with them.

22:53

Structure Make sure you request specific organizational elements, like if you want something in a specific order and or you want to focus on a specific topic in that text. That's really important. I always make sure that I tell the AI what topic to focus on in the text, okay, and any complimentary additions. So if it gives you something and then you're like, oh, you know what you read through it, this would be a great addition to add to this checklist or to this mini course or whatever, it is okay. So read through it on AI and then go through it and re-prompt it if you need to. And or then you copy and paste it and start the editing process. So examples An example prompt structure would be transform a specific section of your book into whatever lead magnet type that helps readers. What is their specific benefit? Okay, maintain my voice, which sounds so you're going to add your voice characteristics and style and make sure to include whatever specific elements you want in your lead magnet.

23:52

Okay, so you can also create a visual lead magnet. All right, one of the things you can do with ChatGPT right now is it's getting pretty good at doing visuals and there's also Canva AI which does visuals, so you can put your information in and ask it to create a visual based on your information. All right, now that you have your lead magnet, you need to put it strategically in different places, all right. So where do you want to put this lead magnet? Okay, that it's going to show up. Now you're going to create your lead magnet and then you need a landing page or a form for somebody to fill out to get your lead magnet, and that's really easy to find on ConvertKit or any other type of email platform. Okay, all email platforms pretty much have a place where you can create a form and then that form just pops up, where people can click a link and the form pops up and then they fill out the information and then you have your lead magnet connected to that where it forwards to your lead magnet.

24:47

All right, so book interior so that's what I talked about before. The front and back of your book can be seen on Amazon, so you want to put it definitely in there. Your author website or your book page of your author website. Your social media profiles, including social media, obviously, posting on social media, any podcast appearances you do, you definitely want to give your podcast host a link to your lead magnet, your reader community. So if you have a reader community, like a beta reader community, definitely give them a link to your lead magnet as well.

25:18

Of course, this is not an endless list. This is just a few ideas. So if you have a really great idea of where you can put your book lead magnet, please put it in the comments below. Oh, and, of course, your email list right, because that's the obvious one I didn't put in my list is your email list right? So email when you're emailing out everybody that you have on your email list, make sure you mention that in there too.

25:44

All right, so you want to have a if you put it on your email list and or if you're using a lead magnet. You want to have an email delivery sequence like like a email drip campaign. And what does that mean? You have almost all you have almost certainly had an email drip campaign show up in your inbox, because once you get a lead magnet, an email drip campaign is just a follow-up series of emails giving you information, maybe about the lead magnet, definitely about the context of whatever the focus of the subject was that you got the lead magnet about. So they're going to give you some follow-up emails. You don't have to do a drip campaign, but it is a good idea because it gives people more information and you can also offer them something else for free and or upsell them to one of your courses, your paid courses, books, webinars, lectures, whatever it is that you have.

26:24

All right. So what your steps are? One is select a chapter or content to transform today. Two is set up your AI tools. So what AI tools are you going to use? When I'm doing written work, I love to use Claude and I like to use Canva for my graphic stuff. Three, make sure to download the free ebook for this. Oh, sorry, that's on something else, all right. So remember, friends, don't overthink your lead magnet If you can't decide which option is best, start with a simple checklist, okay, so don't over overthink this.

26:56

It's really easy to do. But you don't want to do that because then if you do that, um, you are going to just you know, be stuck in that rabbit hole for forever. So just start off with something. Put it out there, see how it works. If it doesn't work right, try something different. All right, I hope this has been really helpful in teaching you some valuable information on how to take your book content you have been creating for the past year or so and making it into a lead magnet, because that helps build your email list and sell more books. All right, my friends, this is Lynn “Elikqitie” Smargis, signing off for this episode of Publishing for Professionals, and remember to start writing your book today, because your next published book can be helpful for someone else's solution.