You want to make your book personal, but how what else can you provide inside of your book? You want to connect with your audience, demonstrate your knowledge, and impact your reader’s lives, but what could you include in your book to maximize your words and impact?
Last week, you learned four different ways to outline your book. After taking this step, you may be finding that there are missing pieces. I call these gaps. Your outline looks great, but you feel like you’re missing something.
Today, we’re going to discuss what can be included in your book so your audience gets what you’re saying and walk away feeling empowered, inspired, and ready to take serious action in their lives!
Consider adding one or a few of the following below to fill in the gaps in your book:
Personal stories
What did you go through that could help your reader understand your point better? What is your own personal story? How can you use your story to relate to your audience? How can you connect with them by bringing up your past mistakes, failures, ah-ha moments or successes?
Readers love to know that you started from scratch too, that you just didn’t make it one day. Become relatable to your readers by really laying out how you overcame the same objections, feelings, fears, emotions, or anything else to achieve your higher self.
Case studies
If you’ve been working with clients for a while now, you might have a few success stories. Did one of your clients just explode in their business, making far more than they intended to? What happened to the one client who went off to become a great musician because he followed your advice?
Using case studies can communicate that when someone works with you, their results are big! And these people started off just where your reader is at right now! Use a case study or two to show that 1) you know your stuff and 2) when people put your stuff into action, big stuff begins to happen to their lives!
Quotes
Quotes reinforce your point, whether it’s a quote by you or another person. Sometimes it’s these little quotes that get people’s attention and really closes the gap for them in their own lives. Don’t be afraid to use a quote or two inside your book, whether it’s a quote from yourself or from someone you love and admire!
Interviews
Interviewing experts for portions of your book is a great way to add content, especially if it’s an area that you’re not great at. If you’re writing a book about building a business by using Facebook, then you may want to interview an expert on Twitter or Instagram to talk about how people can leverage other social media platforms.
When you bring in an interview, you are providing more value to your ideal clients by showing off someone else’s genius! Plus it makes you look like you know people and thus, builds more credibility on your end.
Stories from someone else that resonates with you
The stories you use don’t even have to be your own stories or your client stories. If you heard a story that resonates with you and it would fit perfectly inside of your book, please include that in there!
Here’s a caution: make sure you get permission from the original author to cover your bases. If you cannot find the author, then see if it’s copyrighted. If it’s not, I would include a Reference page at the back where I would include the link to where I found the original story at.
There you have it! You have five ways to fill in the gaps, make your point, and truly become unforgettable to your target market. I know many of you are now brainstorming at what the possibilities are for you and your book you’re about to write or are writing right now.
If you want to dig in further, then I do want to encourage you to download your FREE Fill the Gap Blueprint, where you’ll be able to take every one of these and really brainstorm on what personal story you could include and what sort of case study could you provide in your book.
The Fill Your Gap Blueprint is a few pages from The Author’s Blueprint Workbook, which will be coming out in June as an online course! Get the sneak peek of what The Author’s Blueprint Workbook looks like for FREE! And then if you’re interested in learning more about The Author’s Blueprint online course, comment below and I’ll give you the details (More details will be coming out in May, so stick around!)!
