#014 - What to Offer as a Lead Magnet While You’re Writing a Book

Welcome back to another hit splits episode. This month in December, I hosted my first Voxer Office Hours for Christian Book Academy members. And it was super fun. I recently experienced this being part of a group program, and it was. It's a super great way, especially if you're an introvert. You can use the free Voxer app to either send a voice message or a text and get a personal reply email. And so what happened is my members logged into Voxer. They would send me a audio of three minutes or less or a text with a question, and then I would reply. And you can do it, you know, throughout the day. So you can do it no matter if you're in different time zones. And it's just so much more effective than a regular zoom Q and A. And I found that writers typically are shy to ask questions. It is so interesting. I'm like, why? Why? Why don't you just ask your question? You know, I'm not shy to ask questions. I am an introvert, but I get it. You know, sometimes it feels like, oh, I should know this, or I don't want to ask this, you know, in front of everybody else. And I just want a private way to ask my questions. So we have a couple ways in Christian Book Academy to do this. You can post an anonymous post in our Facebook group, so there's that option. You can also submit a question to our private podcast for CBA members and you can ask that it be kept anonymous. But I also decided to add Voxer Office hours. So this was really fun. And one of our members asked a question. She asked about her lead magnet as she is writing her book. And I thought this was a really good thing to even share with you here. If you are writing a book, I really recommend that you stay focused on finishing your first draft and getting that book published. It's so easy to get into the weeds of marketing. And I've seen it over and over again where then people get stuck in like, oh, like, okay, yeah, who is my target audience and what do I want my lead magnet to be and all these things. And yes, I mean, if you have time and if you have the capacity to do it, doing all of those things as you're writing your book, setting up your author platform, you know, all of those things that can be amazing. But again, what I have found for most writers is that it just gets overwhelming and it's easy then to get stuck. Paralysis of analysis, Right? So she was asking just about sharing her introduction and first chapter as a lead magnet. And typically, I don't recommend this for your book because once your book is published, you know, people can go onto Amazon and see the look inside feature. And a lot of times it has your introduction and first chapter. So people can typically get that for free, you know, and read that for free on Amazon or wherever once your book is published. But I was thinking about it when she asked this because you know, when you're writing your book, this is exclusive content. They cannot get this anywhere else. And it builds excitement for your upcoming book. So, you know, you can set it up and this makes it really easy so you're already writing your book. You know, make sure that you really work on self editing that first introduction and first chapter. You may want to let them know that it's still an advanced review copy, that you're still going to have additional edits done, but you can set that up. And she was asking about how to do that if a PDF or whatever. And I just recommend doing it as a PDF. So you can do this in any word processing software, whether it's Word, Google Docs, pages, whatever. You know, you have the content in there and then you can just export it or save it as a PDF and then you can upload that to your hosting wherever you want to use. Google Drive is a super simple option. It's free. So you could up, you know, just use create it as a Google Doc, then do file save as, you know, save it as a PDF into your Google Drive and then you can, you know, have the sharing options on that PDF and include that in the automatic email they get after they sign up for your email list. But anyways, that, that's more than I'm, I'm really intending to go into in this episode. But basically I just thought, you know, this, this is a really smart thing to do while you're writing your book. You can always update and create a different lead magnet later. And I highly recommend that you have something that really, you know, is compelling that something it solves a problem that, you know, maybe it's deleted scenes from your fiction novel and we give tons of ideas for lead magnets and what to create in Christian Book Academy. I did a lot of research on this a few years ago and so if you're a Christian Book Academy member, it's in the Platform Challenge module and there's a lot of ideas in there for you. But if you're writing your book, keep it simple. Keep it simple. And having the intro and the first chapter available is, is actually a really cool thing because you know, your followers get exclusive access to that content. Then you're building a list of interested people. And I was telling my, our member, I was saying, you know, you can then follow up with the people who signed up for that. You could see if any of them want to be beta readers. If you want to use beta readers, you can also see if any of them are interested in being reviewers later. So it depends on what your main goal is. If your main goal is book sales when you launch, then you know, you want to really focus on that with your list. But you could send an email to your list, you know, a month or so before your book is going to be released and ask who would want to be a reviewer. And we actually have a really great training on how to get honest reviews. It's a toolkit. I mean it has all, every template that you can probably think of. Like it's super easy. I've given you step by step instructions on what to do, an Excel spreadsheet to keep everything organized and our members love it. So if you are a Christian Book Academy member, that's available to you in the self publish module or you can also check it out in our book marketing shop under the toolkits. It's in there. But anyways, there's just so many options once you start building this list. But it's a really quick, really easy step, simple option to get something up. And you don't even need to have a website yet, you know, you can also use the landing page that they give you when you use an email service like Mailerlite or ConvertKit. A lot of times they'll give you a free landing page and it will be a weird looking link, but that's okay. You know, I, I really.

You know, during our Voxer office hours there were several different people. I was just encouraging them to not get stuck in the weeds, right? To not feel like you have to have everything perfect before you release it to the world. To not feel like you need to know every little detail and every little thing, like what is it that you need to do to get that thing done, to get it out? And with the sleeve magnet, you actually can do it really quickly, easily and for free. And so because you know, Male Taylor Light and ConvertKit, they have a free level for so many subscribers. So anyways, I just hope that this encourages you like just to sometimes think a little bit more deeply about something and you know that you don't have to have everything ready or you know, have a certain thing done to move forward. Do what you can and release it. And I think that's been one of my. One of the reasons that we've been successful. If I would have waited until everything was perfect to publish a book or to. To do the things that we've done, it, it just would have never happened. And I know, I know many of you struggle with the perfectionism. So if you're struggling with what to put up as a lead magnet, put up your introduction, your first chapter, and just get it done. You know, get something done. So start building a list of people interested in what you have to offer. You can always update it later. Begin asking the Lord for those ideas of what kind of lead magnets will really connect with my audience will really convert. Well, so convert means they come to the page and they sign up. You know, they actually want what you're offering. So you can keep pressing in, you can keep asking the Lord. And what I find is once something's on my mind and I start asking God about it, then when I am just out and about driving or showering or walking or whatever, a lot of times these ideas will start to come into my mind, capture them, take a note, you know, and then, you know, keep. Keep brainstorming and keep working out what the next step will be. But I hope this was helpful. You know, I just wanted to share about this option, and I will talk to you in the next hit splits episode.