Every month, SkillBites hosts a teleseminar on a topic designed to help entrepreneurs grow their business.  These teleseminars are open to the SkillBites community.  Details are provided in our monthly newsletter.  To join our community, just click on one of the free eBooks we offer on our website – the Business or Lifestyle Samplers or Write a Book Easily.  This month, our topic was on the many ways to use an eBook to build your business.  Our speaker, Carol Abrahamson, CEO of Executive Authors (www.ExecutiveAuthors.com), shared over 50 free ways to use an eBook to build a business.

Carol began by explaining a key difference between the approach of general non-fiction writers and writers of business books.  In the former case, the author is looking for the return on investment in sales of the book.  In the latter case, the author is looking for the return on investment from gaining more prospects and customers for their business.  EBooks help build the funnel of prospects who can be converted into customers of higher priced goods and services offered by the business.

Even before the book is written, a book can help build the author’s credibility.  Once the author has identified a title, the author can refer to her upcoming book in her elevator speech, email signature, voicemail greeting, marketing material, interviews, conversations, bio and social media.  In fact, the author can use social media to get feedback on the title and the topic of the book, thereby building engagement as well as obtaining valuable input.

After the book is completed, the author can do many of the pre-publication suggestions and do many others.  The author can do media outreach, to obtain interviews or stories about themselves or their business.  The author can do blogger outreach, posting on others’ blogs and maybe a virtual blogger tour.  The author should issue a press release about the launch of the book, making sure to include keywords that will help the target market find the information to be able to purchase the book.  The author can also repurpose the content of the book into webinars, articles, podcasts, speeches, workshops, blog posts, and ezine articles.