7: Turn your Social Media Content into a Book

Foreign.

Hi there.

Before we dive into today's episode, I want to ask you an important question. Are you wondering why your hard work isn't reflecting in your bank account? If so, I've got something that could change the game for you. With my digital product accelerator one on one coaching program, I'm on a mission to help entrepreneurs like you bank consistent revenue without sacrificing your time, time or sanity. Imagine shifting from 90% client facing work to enjoying consistent revenue from your digital products, all while reclaiming your time. You already know that you don't need another course and a one size fits all approach isn't going to cut it. What you need is a strategic long term plan tailored just for you. So if you're ready to build the profitable, freedom giving business you've dreamed of, apply to work with me by going to destinycop.com apply. I cannot wait to learn more about you and your business.

Welcome to the Course Creators MBA Podcast. I'm your host Destiny Kopp and in this podcast we're covering actionable tips to grow your online course business. And I'm very excited to be here today with Emily and we're going to be talking about how to turn your social media into a book. Emily, thanks so much for joining us today. Could you tell us a little bit more about you and your journey and how you got to where you are today?

Yes. Destiny first, thank you so much for having me. I have learned so much from you in the past year and it's just an honor and an excitement to be here. So, so yes, I have always been teaching and so it's been a really fun journey for me. I was an elementary school teacher, a high school teacher and even a preschool teacher before I became a full time author coach. And so I'd always written my whole life, I'd always published my whole life. But yeah, I made the leap and now I'm coaching people one on one and creating courses on how to make a book. And so my heart and soul is just so with your audience because we're all in this together, taking these different ideas and making courses and teaching in new ways. And so yes, in the past few years that I've been in business, what I've really focused on are spiritual ways and just kind of open minded new ways. Using energy, using yoga to focus your attention and write the book you're meant to write. Really put that work that you've always wanted to do, that you've always felt in your life purpose to do, put it out into the world and so recently I launched a course, a very simple self study course on how you can use your social media to create a book. Because I noticed so many people, the biggest obstacle to writing a book was time. And so people spend so much of their time, especially people doing courses and who have their own personal brand and personal business they're getting on social media every single day and posting and growing their audience and then they, they have a harder time getting away to find the time to create that larger course or that larger book. And so I found a system where you can really outline your book and then make sure that the posts and the work you're doing contributes to your larger idea, contributes to that larger journey of a full course or a full book. And it's just been so much fun. There are so many advantages and people are doing the course and I'm also applying it to my coaching. So, yeah, I suppose that's the arc of the journey. Yeah.

Well, I love what you're doing and you mentioned so many good points there. One being, you know, so many course creators, they want to, you know, write a book. Obviously it helps build their expertise into the market, but it's just a time thing. But they have all this content out there. So I love what you're doing and how you can walk people through the process of taking content that they've already created and pull that in to launch their book. So I absolutely love that.

Thanks.

So I have some questions for you and just kind of answer them the way you feel best. First question is, why are Instagram and Facebook particularly good platforms for authors? How can they use them and how can course graders use them to launch their next book?

So I found, because I'm working with a lot of authors and so we spread out across different platforms. That's a fun thing about being a coach, is that you're not just testing it with your own work, but you have 20 or so other people using the ideas and testing them out. And so I really started to focus on in on Instagram and Facebook with my techniques because I'll start with Instagram. So there's a growing audience. You know, right now there are about a billion people on Instagram and more than a billion people on Facebook. And the fun thing is that with that huge volume of users, people are using it as the new television. More people are on social media than there. Then there are people watching television at this point, which. And some people really look down upon that in that people are losing time on those platforms. But I think it's really in how you use it. And if you want to grow a business, if you want to express yourself, and if you want to create something meaningful for other people, then you can really use the fact that, you know, just by being alive, you, you have international viewers everywhere. And so I focused in on Instagram and Facebook because I love the way they've really, they use the platform for self expression. So let's say you're creating a course. You're able to connect immediately with your readers and your audience by using the different, the surveys, the pictures, the captions, all of those different aspects of those two platforms. And so you can break your ideas out down into little organic chunks and put them out there as long as you have an outline. I'm going to do a little aside here that's fun in that because any social media platform so focused on chatting, it actually helps you sculpt your book, especially Instagram and Facebook. And I think you'll notice, you know, there's direct messaging, there's private messaging, and then there are also the posts where people just get into lively conversations. It's really easy to start a lively conversation on those two particular platforms. And so the thing that I think is really fun is that you can actually, if you're a teacher, if you're a coach, if you have a course where you're teaching people something, you start the conversation and then people are going to ask you questions, people are going to interact with that. And one thing I found I'm doing more and more is that in those platforms, my audience asks me about the writing blocks that they're most concerned with. They asked me about the aspects of the writing craft that they most want to learn. And so what I always have going is a running outline of my course or of my manuscript. And when somebody asks me a question, I will put my heart into answering that question in the most honest way I can. And then guess what I'll do? I will copy that answer and then I will paste it into my manuscript where it applies. And then what? I have an organic document that really serves my audience in the way I want to serve them, but it also uses their language. Something funny is that when I first started writing books, to help people write books, one thing, one word I used all the time was epiphany. Because I thought people want to have epiphanies. You know, that's when you can just think of an entire chapter and you just write it down. And so I was always using that word. Then I kind of realized nobody uses the word epiphany. Lots of people like the word epiphany, but nobody identifies with it except for me. And so then I started just molding. I still talk about the same content and I still talk about the same stuff, but because I really develop my material using social media, I just naturally navigate towards the same language as the customers and the people I'm serving. So it makes a really fun journey where my audience is building the entire time and then the course or book that I've created is just right into their hands because I've created it using the conversations that I have with them.

So I had a lot of aha moments going through that. So, you know, in what I've been doing, I take, you know, blog content or podcast content, right. And then use that and repurpose that on social media. But you're actually kind of doing it the other way, where you're taking what you've posted on Instagram or Facebook, but most importantly, the conversations that you're having with your ideal customer and using that make your book or, you know, you can use that. Honestly, you could use that anywhere, right? You could even use it for ad copy or absolutely copy that you're doing. But what you came up with is just absolutely brilliant because it helps you speak the language of your ideal client. And that is so good.

Emily, thank you so much. Yeah, and just a little add on there that's fun is that, is that you want to make sure that you have the clarity. Really the only difference is that if you're building something bigger, yes, you use it in copy, but as long as you have a place to put it, because creating that outline first is a really fun thing to do there because then you're collecting it and it makes you be more organized and it makes you put your heart into it because it is multi purpose. And then what you have is kind of a scrappy document with just a bunch of notes. And so then as you sculpt it into a blog, that's taking the idea to the next step and building it out into a longer form. And then finally what you do is you sit down with that draft of blogs and notes and then you put it all together. So yes, absolutely. It's so much fun.

So tell me a little bit more about the outline. And you've created courses before, so you're familiar with them. Is it similar, is it similar to create an outline for a book as you would for a course? Or is there some nuances there that you need to keep in mind?

Well, and I think this is good because this is really the difference between your blogging and social media and your paid content. So this is a distinction that I go into in detail in the course, but I'm really going to lay it out here. So when somebody is consuming your social media, you don't want them. You don't want to have an outline that starts from start to finish in your Instagram feed or your Facebook page, because then people are going to get confused. They're going to feel like they're walking into your social media in the middle of a conversation and they missed the first part of it. So when we're talking about an outline, when people follow you or when people subscribe to your email list in your blog, they're expecting samples, they're expecting tidbits of information, and you need to give that to them, otherwise they're going to get confused. And if somebody didn't start talking to you when, you know, January of 2015, well, they've missed out because they missed the beginning of the sequence. Right? And so that's why it's important to pop things in in different moments. So I have a detailed description of outlining. I'll give you the gist of it quickly. First, you want to think of where your person is at the beginning of the course, as all good marketers do that. You have a wonderful description of that in your material in your courses. Where at the beginning of the journey, where is your person at? Your reader, your student at. At the beginning of this journey? I like to think of them as sitting down in the self help aisle of Barnes and Noble, you know, just a little bit distraught, really, needing help. You picture where they are at the beginning of the journey and then you think of where they are at the end of the journey. Where do you want to take them? Where do you want, how do you want them to feel as they read the conclusion of your book? And so you go from there to there, and then you just think up the steps in between. You give yourself the number five, and then you challenge yourself to think of three, five steps or eight steps and you just clarify. So that's my quick and easy outlining tool. There are a lot of nuances that go into that. You know, you might be taking somebody on the hero's journey or you might be taking them on. What I taught in school was always Freytag's pyramid. So there are different story structures as you take somebody through a course or a transformative journey. There are different details. But in the basic, in your basic outline, you want to Say, where are they at the beginning, where they at the end. And then you take them through steps. Now, that journey, that outline, are people who choose you as their course leader, as their teacher, as their guru. And they choose you by paying. They're saying, okay, this woman knows what she's talking about. This man knows what he's talking about. I'm going to put my money on this person and I'm going to take their course, start to finish. That's your paid material. And so the difference is social media, they're just there for the hors d'. Oeuvres. They just want to sample it, and it's important that you give them what they're expecting. And so the way that I do social media to a book is that I create the outline ahead of time, and then I sprinkled that outline throughout my content calendar. So different things come up at different times. And that way nobody is ever missing out on anything. The little ideas you can consume in a moment, the way social media is meant to be consumed. And then if people like the samples, then they say, I want to take her course, I'm going to buy her book. Going to really commit some time and money to taking the journey with her, rather than just to continue to go along those samples. So the outline is an important part. But don't allow your blog or social media to unfold as an outline, because that's the distinction between your free content and your paid content.

I love that, and it makes me want to go create my outline for my book today. Yes, I know.

I love talking to you about that.

Oh, goodness. So what are some tips for creating content that you can use for a book? So we're talking about social media content. So what are some tips you have for that?

So there are some quick tips. I'm gonna, I help people do this for fiction as well as nonfiction, and so of course I'm gonna focus on nonfiction right now. So there are different kinds of posts and even blogs you want to create. You want to create teaching blogs in which you might just give a little, A little, A little lesson. You might just. This might just be some insights or thoughts that have come to you in the moment. And so then just allow yourself to really give the insight or the teaching you want to bring across. Another kind of social media post you might want to do is a how to. So that's those. The classic blogs where you give, you know, create your book using social media and five easy steps. I've written that one many times. And so those are the how to or steps. Teaching tends to go a little bit more to the side of inspiration. And then the how to is really the practical. Let's get in an implement. Both of these are important, different types of posts to put up on social media. Nobody wants to read only the practical without the inspiration. And without the practical, the inspiration gets a little heady, it gets a little in the air. Then the third type that I'll talk about here is the personal, the behind the scenes, the stories, the connection. And so I love helping people open up and use their stories in their blogs and in their posts. And one quick way that I go into a lot of detail in the course, make sure in a caption on Facebook or Instagram if you want to share a story in 300 words. I love, because I'm into the writing craft, I love cutting things down. And so one thing I would the three elements I find make for a really meaningful story post is to make sure that each post in the story has a mood or emotion. It has a character, someone they connect to. This could be either you or it can be an example, another character. And then the third thing, if you want to tell a good story in a. In a short amount of words, there has to be a change. So they have to. So the person has to enter one way and exit another way. And so sometimes in a blog, we'll be able to go into a personal story, and I have a lot of examples of this in my blog. We'll go into his personal story, where it might be longer, and we'll share some details, we'll connect with the audience, we'll tell the audience, you know, this is something that happened to me. And I know a lot of you will be able to identify with this. This is something that happens to me. You'll go through the story of what happened and you'll explain why it changed you and what you learned from it. And so what I've had a fun time doing is I'll write blogs like that, you know, once a month or once every few months. But then because it's a personal story, I kind of feel weird when I'm going onto social media and saying, okay, now come back to my blog and I'll really tell you the vulnerable story. And so I think it's much better if to really cut that story down to the essence when you're sharing it on social media. You take out details, take out parts, but really get to the essence and the lesson and the three things that are important to keep in place when you do that is make sure you have the person, the mood or emotion that you're capturing and the change that the person goes through. So those are just some little tips on what you can do with social media and how you can use it.

So I love that. So the three type of areas, practical inspiration. And I think for the most part I have that down and I'm talking about my own personal experience. But where I struggle the most I think is the personal post. Right. But yeah, I really like how you outline that and how you said you got to have really those three areas, the mood, the character, person, which would be, you know, for a lot of us would be ourselves and then the change and what that happens in. So I love how you've laid that out.

And the fun thing about that is I think so many of us have problems with vulnerable stories and with good reason. I mean, why should I just blab all of my stuff out on the Internet? And I think by like really focusing it right there is that when you look at those three elements, you want to match them to what your audience wants to learn. That's where those are the stories that really connect. You think about what's the emotion my audience has. Maybe they are insecure before they launch a course or maybe they're just exhausted and overwhelmed because they don't have any time. And so then you key into your own life. When have I felt like that? And then you're not as self conscious because you're really centered in the reason that you're sharing. And that's where the connection comes in.

Hey there Destiny here and I'm the host of the Creators MBA podcast and this episode is brought to you by HelloContent Shop your Go to destination for content creation in your online digital product business. I understand how busy you are as an online business owner. I am right there with you and that is why I have filled our hello Content Shopify my store with low cost digital products that you can use as a lead magnet or part of your paid programs like your online courses or memberships. We also have marketing templates like email swipe files and social media templates designed to save you time and money. So whether you're looking to streamline your content strategy, enhance your digital products or just save some profile precious time. I've got you covered my friend. Now visit the HelloContent Shop today and take the first step towards effortless content creation.

Great information. Let me ask you a question about kind of the caption. So if you what's the best way to fit a story into the caption of a post. So what are some tips and suggestions you have on doing that? Just kind of take this conversation a little bit further.

Yeah. And. Well, on my Instagram there are certain places where I do that. There's one particular one. If you go to my Instagram and you see a big red angel, that would be a good example of just a quick story post. And I think the other thing is you don't have to just share vulnerable stories. You can share just fun stories. And so I call that my angel post. And sometimes I direct people's attention back to that so I can just show a personal example. And so the tip there is you can tell a story in a single sentence. You can tell a story and in three paragraphs, as long as it has those certain elements where you're connecting with your audience's emotion. And an extra tip there is to, you can start it out with a sentence like, you know, have you ever felt really insecure when you're about to put yourself out there? And then that first line, we see that the emotion that we're going to share in that post is going to be the emotion of insecurity. And by connecting, like really consciously connecting with your audience, by asking them if they've ever felt that way, now they know how it's relevant to them and they're keyed right into the post. So then you go into a story. I remember when I was launching for the first time, you know, one of my stories is I was having like I was getting sick. My eyes got really, probably spending a lot of time on already connecting with people. I mean, I've even done this in direct messages. Somebody's asked me a specific on point question in a direct message, I've given them an answer and then I've just copied that over to my book manuscript. So that's the first thing. That's the first thing. So the practical is, yes, start streamlining your social media and connection methods with your outline for your book. You can get them done together. But the second thing I think is even more important is that so often when people say I don't have time to write a book, what they're kind of saying is I feel guilty spending time on creativity or I feel maybe it's a little egotistical or self indulgent writing a book when I really should be making spaghetti for my kids, when I really should be doing I really should be doing these practical matters for my business. All of these things. We don't feel guilty About So there's an underlying belief system that I really like to help with, that the book should be secondary. And so first of all, examine if any of those beliefs might be coming up. Is there some nervousness around putting yourself out there in manuscript form? Do you have a little bit of disbelief around who am I to write this book and see if that also might be dominating your decisions around time? Because that's often one of the first things I go into as a coach is that we can make time for anything, but sometimes those under underlying belief systems come in first. And so actually I just had a blog about that because of course before I became an author coach, I was a full time teacher, a mom of a toddler. And so sometimes starting to work on those beliefs of actually I'm just really nervous to sit down alone with my manuscript. That's the real reason I don't have time, rather than the actual logistics of that time. Because, you know, all those problems can be worked through, all of those problems can be solved. So those are the first two things. If you're super ready to write your course and book, then yes, use that social media outlining tip. But if there are underlying beliefs where every time you sit down with a manuscript you feel guilty about all the other things you need to do, then yeah, just come into my, just talk to me. Because I'm really good at kind of massaging those out. So you can see why it's important to develop yourself creatively, develop yourself as an author, develop the way you can serve people in long form as a book. Because people really do need the depth of what you can create through a book, not just those. You're not just here to do those little everyday tasks that tend to take up our time. You have real depth and you have a real contribution to make. And a book or a course is one of the best ways to make that contribution.

I love that. So the first tip, creating your outline, the structure, but most importantly, saving all your content, Even like the DMs, like you said, because that can save time. I love that. And then really taking a look at your underlying belief systems. And I think that's probably, as you mentioned, the most important thing. Emily, thanks so much for all of your great tips today. This has been a wonderful session. Can you tell people how they can find you?

Yes. So my brand, my book writing system is called the Meaning method. So that's www.meaningmethod.com. and then I also have a really fun active writing group which is called the Writer's block. So that's where I get into a lot of the material around breaking down those belief systems, doing fun stuff with social media, practical stuff around publishing and editing and all that stuff. And then finally, if you want to see those examples for Instagram, my handle on Instagram is emilytmaher. And so all of those spellings and everything else will be provided below. Destiny, I adore you. I have learned so much from your material, from your course and everything. Thank you for having me on.

Yes, thanks so much for joining us today. And to all of you course creators out there, thanks for listening and subscribe to the Course Creators MBA podcast. I would love it if you would leave a review. And bye for now.