How to write a book to build your brand

The best reason to write a book is to build credibility for your brand. Don’t write a book to get on the bestseller list or become famous. Simply recognize it’s still an amazing tool to extend your brand among your target market.

Gone are the days where the biggest challenge is actually writing the content. Now that is only half the battle. Once the writing is complete you have to strategically engage your target audience and convince them your content is highly valuable. 

Here’s a few best practices to consider:

1. Write with a team: It may seem odd to enlist a team or a co-author on your book that has not necessarily been along on the full journey you have or may not be an expert in the same topic. However, sharing the burden provides accountability and improves the final product. Find someone who will help drive your project forward and give you a to-do list on what is next and where additional effort needs to be exerted in specific areas. Our team had a blast throughout the process and 3 of our team of 5 have gone on to write their own books using the same process!
2. Self-publish: Unless you have a massive social media following or plan on a viral video in the near future, you’ll most likely need to plan to self-publish your content directly to Amazon. There are plenty of resources online to walk you through this process. 
3. Don’t lose anyone you don’t have to: Contrarian perspectives sell books, but a good rule of thumb is not to lose anyone you don’t have to lose. If your goal is to build trust and move people to action, you’ll want to keep the focus on clear communication instead of offending part of your audience who felt aligned with your message. Seek to educate instead of alienate. 
4. Launch team – Make sure you engage your social audience throughout the process so they can go on the journey with you and will be excited about the launch process. Invite them into the process near the last few weeks to help with graphic design, Amazon reviews, and create a grassroots content push on launch day. 
5. Great for team culture – Perhaps the best backdoor strategy for building and injecting company values deeply within your culture, is writing a book. Your team will see this as a manifesto and they become ambassadors of your brand on a whole new level. Employees will have increasing pride in the trajectory of the business. Our book, Refugee Workforce, gave our team new language to describe our work and new heroes for us to celebrate. When I was on staff at HOPE International, Peter Greer and Chris Horst wrote Mission Drift, and consequently empowered our team and our stakeholders to help us on the journey of staying mission true.