Why an engagement plan is critical to your business book success

In a world of content overload, it’s time to have a rethink about the real purpose of sharing content, especially in relation to business books. And for me this means focusing more on real, quality engagement.

Before I go into this I want to set the scene as I see it now.

The rise of fake books and morphing of search engines

With the rapid roll-out of AI offerings from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Apple Intelligence? and more, the business book world (and other non fiction topic areas) is being inundated with what I call ‘fake books’.

Fake books have been around for a while as Kate Knibbs reviews in Wired magazine. It's just now there's a tsunami of them.

In September 2023 Amazon restricted authors to publishing three books a day on its KDP platform . I'm a professional writer and I can just manage three books a year! Of course, I undertake traditional research and writing techniques – actually reading other books, interviewing people, reading primary and secondary documents, synthesiting all this and craft a manuscript. Old school, yes. An actual book with insight, verified facts, sources and new knowledge? Yes, to the best of my ability.

Ai generated books, are crap. They are created, spruiked and sold to generate money for their 'creators'. They don't care about anything else than ripping people off. There are even experts promoting how you can do this and 'make money while you sleep'..while ripping people off.

While they are ripping people off they are making plenty of people more cynical about business and non-fiction books, undermining the value of well-written books by business people with knowledge and real insight that can help others. And that REALLY annoys me.

So, I'll call out these rip-off authors, promoters and pseudo publisher whenever I come across them.

Search engines are 'a-changing'

Separate to this over the past few years search engines have become noisier and less reliable. Google’s ten blue links have transformed into sponsored posts, advertisements, and clunky, ad-filled blogs.

Google is also overhauling its core search engine to feature Generative AI. Most significantly, Google recently announced that it would start showing AI-generated answers (AI overviews) to users in the US then globally. Given that Google has 90% of the global search market this is huge for business book, self-publishing authors.

The answers, powered by its Gemini technology, will appear at the top of Google search result pages and will give users concise summaries along with suggested follow up questions and a list of links they can click on to learn more. Their pitch is that this will improve the user experience by taking the legwork out of searching.

Traditional search results will be further down the screen. If AI overviews do their job well enough users won’t need to click through as many links, if at all.

In a world where AI can browse the internet for me and paraphrase what it sees, who will need/want the links?

ChatGPT has also just revealed a new web search product that will directly challenge Google. Called SearchGPT will work like other search engine but you'll also be able to ask follow up questions in a 'conversational tone' to get more specific answers. It's not available yet but I'll keep you posted.

So here's a question. If more and more people rely on AI summaries and not original sources, how can you (and me) as business book writers share our knowledge and insights, build our visibility and reputation and our businesses?

The answer is through taking ownership of our agency and focusing on direct engagement.

Moving from a content marketing plan to an engagement plan

If you are planning to self publish your business book and have done some homework you may well have come across the need to build and execute a content marketing plan. If not, you soon will and I’m telling you now that a content marketing plan is not sufficient any more to successfully market your business book.

A content marketing plan of old focused on pumping out content across target channels in the hope that some of it would land on the screen or in the feed of your target audience. The more content you pushed out, SEO’ed, tagged, repurposed the higher the chances that your target audience would see it. Of course, you could boost organic content by buying ads, keywords and more, sinking thousands of dollars into Facebook, LinkedIn and other platforms.

Now, this still may well be a valid strategy for some but its costly, time-consuming and as a self published business book author, is it really delivering the high quality exposure, visibility and recognition you want and need to secure more of the right clients?

Perhaps you need to shift your thinking to focus on the quality of the engagement you want to develop OVER TIME so that the quality of the business you attract is more aligned to your objectives, values and services.

An engagement plan for your business book

If you really want to leverage your business book you need to develop and then execute an engagement plan that covers a 12-18 month timeframe.

The start of your engagement should be as you’re finishing the first draft of your manuscript, typically about 4-6 months BEFORE you launch your book.

This said, to start engaging people (your target audience) you need to have done the work on identifying who they are, what their challenges are, how your book is going to help them and where they currently seek out information and knowledge. In other words, you need to engage with them as you’re formulating your book content.

You then need to build out your database and start engaging across the channels they are operating on. And this is not engaging them about your book (at the early stages), it’s about sharing knowledge and insights, becoming a trusted source of valuable, actionable information and responding to their questions, requests and communications.

You might already be undertaking some forms of engagement, but when you start your business book project, it’s an ideal time to take stock of what you are doing and ask if you are really engaging with your target audience/potential clients or just pushing out more content to them? There’s a BIG difference and it will become noticeable when you launch your book if you are not engaging.

As you move through your book project from first draft, final draft, design and layout to printing and then launch, you can leverage aspects of this through a well-constructed engagement plan. Most people LOVE providing feedback on book titles, cover designs, key challenges, topics for exploration…if you ask. So, ask and engage.

Peter Merrett is doing a GREAT job of this with his book Wonderlicious

This way you build a genuine, interested book community around your business book way before it’s even launched.

Then, as you get closer to the launch of your book it and you are already visible and recognised in a way that you hadn’t been before, and people (if asked and engaged) will help you spread the word, share your story and even buy your book. Tony Farnham is well into this phase of his engagement plan .

Of course, your book launch is a great celebration and easy opportunity to engage people.

But what happens next?

Well, I can tell you. Most book authors stop doing anything to market and promote their book after about a month as they didn’t have a plan (content or engagement) for AFTER the launch. Yet this is potentially the period where you can sell more books and secure ongoing engagement and recognition (and convert business). Peter Ritchie with his book #themagic ofmcdonalds is a great example of this.

So what does an engagement plan look like for a business book?

Depending on your time and the investment you want to make a Business Book Engagement Plan can be relatively simple, focusing on a couple of channels/platforms or more multi-dimensional and sophisticated. The approach you take will largely depend on whether you’re planning to DIY or you outsource some or all of it. Either way you’ll need a a clear strategy, goals, budget, reporting structure and capacity to execute.

For a business book it should cover at least six months before your book launch and at least 6 if not 12 months after the launch. I have some clients who have a two-year engagement/content plan they are executing on and that is still delivering for them.

They key to a great engagement plan is to, well, engage, not just send out content.

In an AI-generate book and content world, pushing out more content, no matter how special it is to you, simply won’t get the cut through and outcomes you want.

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