As I'm sure you know, one of the main lead conversion drivers in an Inbound Marketing strategy is great quality content. However, if you've never created an ebook before, it can be a bit confusing exactly how to put together your first one.

No worries, in this blog we will cover some of the most common questions and tips to keep in mind when creating your first ebook download.

Content

For all top and middle funnel offers, your content should stay 95-99% educational and have little to no sales, promotion, product/service information in them. At these stages the reader is not even close to thinking about purchasing and to overwhelm them with sales/promotional information so early in the funnel will scare them off.

Make sure your content is really focused around amazing educational content that is persona specific and geared towards helping solve some sort of problem that persona is experiencing.

Length

The length for every ebook will vary depending on the topic, industry, persona, etc. I typically recommend to shot for somewhere between 3,000 – 5,000 words. This range works well because if it is too long, people will never find time to read it all. If too short, it can be hard to have enough content to please the reader.

I would suggest starting with those numbers and then experimenting and surveying your audience to see what length they prefer. There are also PDF tracking software that you can use to see exactly what the engagement rate is.

Formatting

The formatting of your ebook is extremely important for usability and readability. Although again it will vary depending on audience and industry, in general, I would suggest keeping your ebooks very visual with lots of images, graphics and styling. Don't be afraid of leveraging white space to make the ebook much easier to digest.

Here's an image from an ebook that is a good example page for you to model after:

Introduction

Make sure to include an introduction to your ebook that should include these items:
• Introduction about the topic of the ebook and what the reader will learn
• Author information including picture, bio, contact information and welcome message
• Linked Glossary (especially for longer ebooks)

Having these items will not only make the ebook easier to read and navigate through, but will also help build a relationship and establish credibility by showcasing the author.

Social Sharing

Find unique ways to incorporate social sharing into your ebooks. I would recommend to have some specific areas (don't liter the whole PDF) with social sharing embed icons and call-to-action to share directly into the PDF. Here readers can easily click and share the landing page download URL so their friends can enjoy the content as well.

Another smart way to incorporate social is to go through and highlight any statistic, quote or important piece of information. After this piece of information, have a "Share this" or "Tweet this" button setup that can be clicked in order to directly share that bit of information out. With this, include a link to the download landing page.

Call to Actions

As you get to the end of the ebook, you should include one call-to-action for the reader to convert on the next stage of the funnel. For example, if this is a top funnel ebook download, at the end include a call-to-action to download the middle funnel.

As you understand more about your audience, you may want to play with adding a call-to-action earlier on in the ebook either after the introduction or mid-way through the ebook. Please keep in mind that you should never compromise usability and readability to push conversions. 

These are just a few of the tips to keep in mind when creating your first ebook. The big thing to keep in mind is not to over-think the creation process. It can be easy to get bogged down into strategy, planning, writing, formatting, etc. and never actually get your ebook done. Of course quality and context is key, however, as long as you follow all the above steps, your goal should be to complete ebook creation them as fast as possible.