Tuesday’s writing tip for authors

Blogtastic, Rajesh Setty’s next book being featured on his ActiveGarage blog, shows the right way to use a blog to simultaneously write and promote a brand-building book.

When you visit the post describing his new book, and scroll down, you’ll encounter Blogtastic’s table of contents. This part of the page illustrates many best practices for blogging a book, such as:

Best Practice #1: Subhead levels

Instead of just listing the chapter titles, Rajesh’s table of contents includes the major topics covered in each chapter.

To make it easy for visitors to skim the list, he’s formatted the topics in an indented bullet list.

Best Practice #2: Visible progress

As he posts about each topic, Rajesh adds a hyperlink from the table of contents to the specific blog post. This makes it easy for visitors to quickly access each topic.

More important, however, is the way the hyperlinks provide a context for the project, engaging visitors and making Rajesh’s progress obvious.

Each time a new topic is posted, a little more of the table of contents goes from gray to red, emphasizing project momentum!

Best Practice #3: Commitment & Promise

I’ve saved the best for last! The scheduled publication date for each post is included in the list, communicating commitment and promise.

• Challenge & commitment. By publicly listing the dates of upcoming posts, Rajesh is challenging himself to keep on schedule. This is one of the classic tools of success. Committing to advance posting dates ensures his Blogtastic! project will keep on schedule.
• Promise. Visitors to his web site cannot help being impressed when they see the progress he is making as each additional topic turns into a link on the scheduled date. Watching each additional post turn into a link engages readers in the same way any race is fun to watch. More important, the on-time “topic to link” conversions reinforce Rajesh’s personal brand as a professional worthy of trust, one with a track record of keeping his promises.

Take-aways

My take-aways include:

• More than “just writing.” Once again, we see that a successful book publishing project involves far more than “just the writing.” Writing is just the manifestation of planning, for example. If Rajesh did not have a detailed plan, or table of contents, for his book, he would not be able to create the posting schedule or create a platform for consistent daily progress.
• Simultaneous writing and promotion. By the time Blogtastic! appears, he will have introduced his ideas, and created a World Wide Rave of individuals spreading your ideas–in David Meerman Scott’s words. Instead of Rajesh just springing his book on an unsuspecting world, Blogtastic!’s value will have already been proven to an enthusiastic market anticipating getting everything available in one place.
• Visual information. My final take-away is the value of using a strong visual to pull a series of individual posts together into a simple, easy-to-understood whole. Without the the list, for example, visitors would find it difficult to relate a series of individual blog posts to the “totality” of the book.

What do you think? What are your impressions of the way that Rajesh Setty’s Blogtastic! as an example of blogging best practices–synthesizing Published & Profitable’s idea of simultaneously planning, writing, and promoting a successful brand-building book? Have I overlooked anything? Can you share any other examples of the ideas expressed above? Can you see yourself doing something similar with your book idea? Submit a comment, below.