A critical part of developing a lead generation strategy that rocks is creating content to fuel your sales campaigns. But creating a content piece can be hard. Using an ebook as an example, here are the steps you need to take from idea to publication:
Formulate your idea.
What are you going to write about? Consider mapping your content to business priorities and industry hot topics, or simply ask your sales or customer service team what customers and prospects are talking about.
Find a subject matter expert.
Does anyone in your organization know a lot about your chosen topic? If so, ask him to be involved with information-gathering. If not, are you prepared to do the research, or will you outsource it?
Determine who is writing the content.
Do you have the expertise to write the asset in-house? If not, you need to find a reliable outsourced writer. Make sure you thoroughly vet her work before contracting the project.
Create an outline.
This step is often overlooked. Make sure you create an outline that goes over what topics you intend to cover and what the format of your ebook will be.
Write the draft.
If you are working with a contract writer, you will want to set him up with your subject matter expert for a brain dump, where you can educate the writer on your topic. When you have all of the information you need, write your draft.
Go through the first round of edits.
After you have completed your draft, you need to edit it. Do a round yourself and ask a colleague to also do a round to get another perspective.
Rewrite as necessary.
After you have your edited first draft, it’s time to rewrite. Incorporate and address all of the edits.
Do one more round of edits and a final read-through.
Send the final text to design.
Either choose an outsourced designer, or send it to your internal designers. Some designers require you to create a brief explaining the project and any ideas you have.
Do design edits.
After it is in the ebook design template, go through and do another round of edits. Look for content issues, but also look for design issues such as a graphic being in the wrong place, or branding that isn’t quite on-point.
Publish your content.
When you get the final designed version back, it’s time to publish. If you have a resource center, make sure it's posted there. You should also decide whether you want to require people to register through a form before they download the content.
Promote the content.
Make sure you promote through social, email, pay-per-click ads, and other lead-generation programs.
