3 Tips to Help You Choose Your Next Great Ebook Topic

The first step to writing a new blog post, case study or ebook is choosing a topic to focus on. Unfortunately, this is often the hardest part and holds us back from starting or completing the project. With longer form content such as an ebook, there is often even more hesitation because of the time investment it takes to write it.

Common questions I often receive from clients are:

• There are so many potential topics, how do we choose just one?
• How will we know it will be successful? (Downloaded, read, shared, etc.)
• Who wants to read this and why?

Those are all valid concerns, but until you actually get the content out into the marketplace, you won't really see the results. It usually takes several different content offers and landing pages to find out what resonates with your prospects or clients the most. 

To better your chances at success, however, here are three tips to help you determine your next ebook topic. 

Choose an audience and pain point

Your company likely has more than one audience or persona that you target. Rather than write for everyone, choose just one. Then find a pain point that your content can help them solve or make their job a bit easier. If you aren't sure what might be 'download worthy', ask your sales team or go directly to the audience themselves.

Check out this great HubSpot infographic to help you map content to your various audiences.

Review past analytics 

Using analytics, find out which of your blog posts or social media updates have performed the best over the past year or so. For instance, many clients view or ask about our AdWords content, so we repurposed a few blog posts into an ebook called, "Taking the Plunge into Google AdWords".

Find viral industry content 

Why do certain types of content become more successful than others? Because they are often more timely and relevant, which makes them stand out in the crowded content marketplace. Scour the top industry websites and communities to see what people are talking about. Expand upon those topics to create more in-depth, download worthy content. 

Like I mentioned above, it is often hard to predict what types of content will be successful and what won't. By doing a bit of research, talking to your audience and building off of other successful content, you should get a head start. 

Interested in learning more about content strategy and creation, contact our marketing team today.