Each time I log into my Facebook account, I read many inspiring messages, quotes, comments and ideas coming from people like you and other close friends of mine.
Sadly, what hits me soooo badly is that most of these ideas rot in your social media account, never to revisit them again.
As an author, I consider this as a wasted legacy.
The time to transform those ideas into a book is now.
You don’t need a college degree or an essay-writing certificate to do this. All you need is strategy, basic research skills, and some level of discipline and organization.
The good thing about writing a book these days is that you must not be the one to edit, proofread, format or publish the book. You can outsource it to a ghostwriter to handle all the nitty-gritty at a shoestring budget.
In this guide, I’m going to show you how to transform your short Facebook posts into a full bloom book?
Let’s dive straight into the process.
Generate content ideas around a central topic
If you are going to transform your Facebook posts into a book, you need to generate content on a particular topic for an extended period, else you might run short of ideas on a particular topic.
A simple way to generate content ideas is to take advantage of Google’s search engine.
Google is my favorite tool in generating content ideas. It is the largest search engine in the world, and it tells you what people are currently searching online in relation to your topic.
For example, if you wish to know what people are
specifically searching online on a particular topic, simply turn over to over to Google search bar and type the
keyword of your principal topic or subject.
For example, if you want to write a book about how to picture yourself in the
future, you could type the keyword: how to picture yourself in the future and
see what shows up on the search results.
When I ran the topic on Google at the time I was writing this post, this is what I got:
Without exploring other avenues, I could generate the following subtopics around that topic:
- How to write a vision for your future
- How to create a future the pleases God
- How to imagine yourself into the future
- How to design your future
- How to paint your future in colors you’d be pleased and make a lasting impact
You could also turn over to YouTube and carry out the same exercise on YouTube search bar.
Remember, your job is not to replicate exactly what others have written; that’d be outright plagiarism. The idea is to identify trending ideas around your main keyword so that you can write highly targeted posts to meet your audience’s needs.
Once you have identified subtopics and ideas to write about, it is important to provide answers to these questions before you post.
- What is the message I’m trying to pass across?
- What is the problem I’m about to solve?
- Do they (my audience) have an idea on the solution to the problem?
- Am I convinced my readers need this information?
Providing answers to these questions will shape the course of your Facebook posts.
If you started posting messages without considering this information, there’s no problem. You could still assemble all your previous posts and rearrange them to meet the needs of your audience.
Write engaging posts.
Nowadays, people are impatient to read long, windy and boring text on social media. For this reason, you need to be short, entertaining and valuable all at once. The goal here is to attract comments from people who find your post interesting so that you can use them to come up with content for your book.
Here are some things to consider when writing an engaging post.
1. Include a call-to-action (CTA)
A call-to-action is an invitation for a reader to take a desired action after reading or viewing your post. The world of marketing uses this term often.
For example,
I recently posted a message on Facebook titled “Time to speak up!” I ended the post with a call-to-action question: Why do people fear speaking up?
The trick with this kind of question is that it automatically hooks your audience to engage with your post.
Someone commented on the post and provided me with some quality information I needed for my book. I simply copied her comment and added it to my archive for further development.
Here was her comment.
I just couldn’t ignore it.
2. Work on your images
Take advantage of Canva app to help you come up with attention-grabbing images for your posts. Head over to Playstore in your Android phone and download the app directly from your mobile phone. It is a free and user-friendly tool with add-and-drop options for editing your photos or images. To avoid any copy infringements, you could source for free images on Pixabay or Pexels.
Here are some examples of posts that combine a captivating image with a call-to-action text.
3. Personalize your post
To personalize your post, write as though you were having a face-to-face conversation with your audience.
Use the pronouns “You and your” throughout your post to create a sense of belonging—almost as if you are talking with someone on a one-to-one basis.
Avoiding sounding too grammatically correct. Reserve jargon’s for your executive meetings.
With social media, you better be social and natural, else you lose your audience with higher bounce rates.
Here is an example of a highly personalized post. Although it is long, it is interesting to read to the end.
Look at how he ends the post: What’s something you believe but cannot say?
You can get more tips on how to write engaging social media post from Sean Bestor’s updated post on Facebook call-to-action examples.
Posts consistently
You could decide to write and post once or twice a week. What matters here is the consistency because you never know those following you on Facebook, even if they are not commenting. One thing is certain: when it’s time to launch the book, followers will show up to grab a copy. So make consistency a priority.
Gather all relevant comments generated from your post.
Some comments from people who respond to your posts can make up a segment of your books’ content. So copy the relevant comments from your social media account and save it on Google docs for future use.
Rearrange the comments to match with the initial content of the post. If you can’t do this, save the raw comments the way it is and hand it over to a ghostwriter to do the job for you.
Assemble all the posts and comments from the post
The last step involves assembling all previous posts and their comments. This stage will be a lot easier if you’ve been collecting comments and documenting each post on a google docs. If not, head over to the homepage of your Facebook account and scroll down to copy-and-paste all previous posts alongside its comments.
Then, hand the raw manuscript to a hired ghostwriter to complete the job for you. All you need to do is tell them what, and how you want your book to look like and the message. You can check here for more information on how to hire and work with a ghostwriter.
Conclusion
In summary, to generate a book from your social media posts is not as complex as you think. All you need is to:
- Generate content ideas from google search results
- Ensure that your post is engaging enough to attract comments.
- Post consistently for an extended period.
- Copy all the relevant comments alongside each post and save it on Google docs.
- And finally, outsource the manuscript to a ghostwriter, stating precisely what you want them to do.
If you need help in transforming your social media post into a book or hiring a ghostwriter, I’m here to help you. Contact us via teachersletters@gmail.com or directly via Whatsapp on (+237) 685 59 64 46.
For more clarifications on the process, leave a comment below.
Go Write like a Pro!
Your Content Master,
Jini
