Continuing from my last post, The Anatomy of a Free Guide, once you have worked out what you want to achieve and decided to give away a free resource it is time to start working on creating one.

Choosing a Topic

The first thing you’ll need is a topic to write about.  One of the best sources of ideas is your own audience.  What common needs do they have?  What is a question or problem that you can solve for them?

As an example, when I wrote the Twitter/WordPress Integration Guide people were just starting to look at ways to connect their blogs to their Twitter accounts.  There were a few tutorials here and there on how to do specific things, but no detailed guide covering a larger portion of the topic.

Take a few moments and think about the information in your niche that could be consolidated and presented better as a comprehensive guide.

Mapping out a Structure

While it might seem logical to just start writing you should first take the time to map out a structure for the resource.  This can be as simple as envisioning what the table of contents should look like, writing out those headings and subheadings, and putting a few bullet points under each one to cover off the main points you want to include in that section.

Your structure can be dynamic and change as you go, but it is easier to have a rough plan to deviate from rather than start with no plan at all.

Writing the Content

The next step is to write the content.  If you are short on time this might be where you have stalled in the past.  Here is a secret not everyone knows – your blog and your free resource can have the same content in them.  Every word you write for your blog can be used in your free guide, and vice versa.

If that seems a bit lazy or a bit like cheating, just consider this – a new visitor to your blog doesn’t have time to go through your archives one post at a time to read all your great cake decorating tips.  They may arrive and read one or two of your posts and then move on.

But if on their first visit they have the opportunity to download your Top 10 Decorating Tips for Amazing Birthday Cakes guide for free, you have the chance to deliver a much higher amount of value to them on their first visit and convert them into a happy and loyal subscriber.

You can also take the opposite approach.  I wrote a 40 page guide on my tech blog and when it was done I released it piece by piece over about 30 days as separate blog posts.  This gave me a month worth of blog posts all pre-written and scheduled.  The 30 days of blogging time that I freed up was then able to be spent improving my blog design, participating in forums, and doing other promotion for my blog.  The result was a boost in both traffic and subscribers.

Write your content to suit the structure that you worked out earlier.  You can write the content in any order that is easiest for you – for example, sometimes writing the introduction is easier at the end, and other times it makes more sense to write it first.

At this stage you’re just trying to put information into the structure that you’ve planned.  Don’t worry too much about the flow of the overall document yet.  And don’t spend too much time fussing over sentences looking for the perfect words.  This is the writing stage, you can clean it up later during the editing stage.

Assembling the Document

You can write your content in text files or in your blog’s editing interface depending on which approach you’ve taken, but eventually you will need to put it all into a single document.

Just about any word processor such as Microsoft Word or OpenOffice.org will let you put together your document for editing, formatting and layout, and produce a PDF file at the end.

Editing the Document

Editing is best performed with a fresh set of eyes, so put your draft document away for a day or two before you start editing.  Editing your own work isn’t easy because your mind often substitutes what you meant to write instead of reading what you actually wrote.

A good technique for editing is to read the document out loud.  By reading it out loud you are forced to focus on the actual words on the page and will discover any spelling and grammatical errors.  You will also pick up on other writing mistakes such as sentences that run too long.  If it is awkward to read out loud it will be awkward for your audience to read.

Be a harsh critic as you edit your own work.  Could that sentence be shorter?  Are you repeating yourself?  Does this paragraph add value or distract from the key message?

Formatting the Document

After your editing is complete you can fix up the formatting.  This stage should include:

• Adding and testing all hyperlinks (tip: test every link twice to be sure)
• Using bold or italics to highlight certain phrases (hint: this helps slow down skim readers so that your key message still gets through)
• Making sure all quotes or references are given proper attribution
• Breaking up large paragraphs into smaller, more readable sections

Finishing the Layout and Design

Now that the actual contents of your document are finalised you can do the last of the layout and design.

Try to make it visually appealing and at the same time practical for people to print out.  This generally means not going overboard with colour or images.  A splash of colour here or there, such as for headings or sub-headings can be enough to make it look great.  A cover image can add a professional look to the document.

Of course if your topic is something like photography then your readers will expect images so you can get away with a lot more.

As you work through the document look for odd little layout problems such as the last sentence of a paragraph running over to the next page.  You can make a few final edits at this stage to clean these up.

Converting to PDF

The standard document format on the web these days is PDF.  You can output a PDF file from either Microsoft Word 2007 or OpenOffice.org as mentioned earlier.  Since OpenOffice.org is free it is a good alternative for people who don’t already own Word, and it works on a variety of operating systems.

When exporting the PDF watch for options that will let you optimise the file size to be smaller.  This is useful on the web as it will save bandwidth, but for documents with lots of images it can reduce the quality of those images too much and make them look shoddy.

After you’ve exported the PDF do one last review of the document to make sure your layout remained intact and things like hyperlinks are all still working.

In my next post on this topic I’ll discuss how you can use your newly created free resource as an incentive for visitors to subscribe to your mailing list.

Image Credit: Flickr

Tagged as: Blogging, Books, eBook, Editing, Writing