I want to expand my fashion styling and fashion consulting business by writing ebooks. Any suggestions or advice?
I want to expand my fashion services by writing ebooks to engage more people. I want to engage my followers by providing them with ebooks that will teach them tips about wardrobe styling. I want to build brand awareness and credibility by writing fashion ebooks. I am open to all advice and information on how to get started. Thanks to everyone.
Jump on Instagram if you haven't yet! That platform is a heaven for the fashion industry. Post as many high-quality pictures as you can, create an immense amount of content and engage with people in the same community. Do not try to monetize Instagram from the beginning, it will affect the quality of your content. Instead, use the content to gain some attention then divert that attention to your ebook, if you want to go that way or directly to your website if you have one. Keep sharing a glimpse of the book on the platform to make people curious and let them know what exactly is inside.
If you want to create a fashion e-book, you first have to think about how will you distribute it and promote it? Emails? Offer it for free? Do some SEO?
Writing it is not the issue here. Getting people to see it/read it is! So before you start writing, I would recommend you find a marketing strategy for promoting.
The BEST place to market and distribute an ebook is through Amazon. Amazon’s SVP Russell Grandinetti, “Books don’t just compete against books. Books compete against Candy Crush, Twitter, Facebook, streaming movies, newspapers you can read for free. It’s a new world.” Twitter is the platform for fashion-related events. Keep up with all the action, trends, collections and conversations on Twitter.
I recently got an e-mail from my 32 year old son. He just got his 5th "wardrobe infraction" write-up. His request was to share my knowledge of proper business attire. I provided him some guidelines for building a business wardrobe based on John T. Molloy's original "Dress for Success" book. My son's not the only person at his work who has had this problem.
Is there an opportunity here for a blog or digital magazine that could boost your styling and consulting business? I'm not sure e-books are the best strategy because:
1. They are fixed publications and fashions are constantly changing.
2. They are not easy to sell
3. Blogging or a magazine is about creating a source for articles that you could later collect as an e-book.
4. You can expand your content base to include others and expand your reach.
Although you are not exactly a part of our target audience you can find e-books and articles on the subject of publishing in our free on-line library at our
Mature-Entrepreneurs.com website
What you wish to accomplish is what is known as Inbound Marketing; whereby the prospect is drawn to your content offerings and develops a relationship with you over time. This is no easy feat, and takes time, but can be quite rewarding.
The first step is to grow an online presence, that is, at least start out with a blog and post regular content to it. You will also need to expand your online presence via social media, PR, as well as blog articles, white papers, eBooks, videos and multi-media content offerings.
Start out by clearly identifying your ideal customer, and learn as much about them as possible, so you can tailor your content to them. There are great resources all over the net, so simply perform searches on Google or Yahoo, Bing etc. Developing Personas is what it is called.
There are a lot of things to learn, but if you are serious it should not be a chore. Good luck.
I think you go with these suggestions, and have beautiful fashion website, like how to dress best, look "how to" website, and then in near future you go with the mobile app on your ideas of fashion, require is to have website and marketing for it...
In my experience eBooks can be a resource that are downloaded and never read, internet marketing is continually moving and you need to keep pace. I'd recommend adding video content with downloadable worksheets, this will keep your audience engaged and give them little tasks to do, rather than "another" eBook to download. Expand your eBooks into actual books that you can sell instead.
Excellent vehicle for branding and marketing your services, Reyna. Basically, either you write the ebook - or if you don't feel comfortable in your writing skills, you can hire someone to write it for you. You would need to provide a basic outline with the information you want included in the book. You could establish your particular "brand" in the industry in the intro of the book - what makes you and your services unique from everyone else's and why you do what you do.
I would be available for hire, or there are a number of sites online where you could find and hire a writer. Feel free to let me know if you need more help.
Try reaching out to these guys at:
http://intervestor.co/ and http://totalpreneur.com/
I believe these sites and the people behind it may help you in more ways than one.
All the respondents have good ideas. I always remember that there has to be an "end game". How will I know that it is done? When will we know we got there? As one mentor told me, "if you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there."
Hi Reyna, my understanding is that you are aiming for engaging more audience by adding value to your current services? So if you think about your ideal customer, who would it be? Why are your current customers choosing you over different crowd of stylists, are the prospects asking for it? Before you dive into creating fremium, ask them if that is something they are happy with, if that is something what would benefit you as a stylist and result in better ROI?
Personally I would think that e-book might be a bit OTT and if you want to write it, that's fine but charge for it. Unless your services are priced as VIP offer so I would throw a book as an additional benefit for them. I am happy to help help you with a bit of branding if you wish as I love working specifically with small ladies businesses.
Pictures! Lot's of them - brief explanations - are you blogging? If not - I definitely would do this - create excitement, show your area of expertise, share tips and inside info - if you build the blogging up - building up your audiences - then when you do an ebook you will already have following - and people will read it -
Who is your target market? Who are you writing to? That is very important to know - the more you personalize things - show your commitment and passion the better your ebook chances will be.
Make sure that you are on the social networks that your target audience is. If you blog and use wordpress - you can utilize a great plugin called "next scripts" - this will sync your blog posts automatically to the social networks you want to share your posts with - adds a bit of efficiency and time.
Bottom line - build up your audience now - If you do any email marketing - start talking about your newest ebook - and when it will be out -
Hi Reyna Washington,
As a corporate brand strategist, my suggestions are as follows:
1. You need to create a competitive brand positioning. It crystalizes the conceptual imagery as how you want the target market to remember you as.
2. Create a compelling brand promise, one that your competitors cannot or will not make.
3. Develop a single-minded, unique selling proposition (USP).
4. Identify your mean target market. Don’t go for all consumers. Instead, zero in on a selected segment. Utilize both demographic and psychographic profiles for maximization of market penetration.
5. Evaluate the main problems of the people in the marketplace. How can your brand offer solutions?
6. What is your brand’s star priority? Consumers must have a sense of belonging.
7. Is your brand’s efficacy and relevance proven?
8. Is your brand featuring a 5-star quality?
9. What is your brand’s desired personality?
10. At what stage is your brand’s product lifecycle?
11. What is the purpose of your publicity?
12. What is your desired achievement?
13. What is your current annual business turnover?
14. What is your targeted business growth?
15. How are you priced? (Premium/medium/economy)
16. Who are your main competitors?
17. Organize a SWOT analysis on the key competition.
18. Vehicles that provide the platform for creating mass awareness: E-books; blogs; websites; radio talk shows; TV talk shows; feature articles in magazines/newspapers; free webinars; podcasts; webcasts; free coaching; seminars; workshops; display booths at high traffic shopping centres; and, social media.
Ralph Neeraj
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The gentlemen before me answered your question. I would like to widen the focus and ask: you really would like to write a(n) (e-)book or you just feel the need to create deep valued high quality content with advices and golden rules? If so, than it is a wise step to focus on the content (more simple: your message) and if it is ready in your mind and you can summarize it in max 3 sentences, than you can start to chose a form or shape for it.
I agree that other content rather than full ebook may achieve the branding objective. Enewsletters are strong offers for capturing email addresses and keeping in touch. Also consider booklets on specific topics; when combined they may be your ebook.
Remember that that book will still be out there next year and years later. Fashion is fickle and changing. I would make the year part of the cover to avoid making yourself look out of touch five years from now, when someone might think it was a new book.
The approach for writing an e-book is more or less the same as a traditional book, if you have written a book in the past you can translate your knowledge to digital.
Approaches may vary per person, though I would suggest to start your book by planning it out from chapter to chapter so you create a clear way it is built up for both yourself and the future readers.
Once everything is in the right order, jot down the general topics you will cover each chapter to create a blueprint for yourself.
With that in place it should be pretty straight forward to write your book in draft.
Have your draft edited or edit it yourself if you cant find/afford an editor and when it is linguistically fine work out the final touches of the layout and optionally add illustrations.
If all went well you would have then written your e-book. By that time Google for advice to publish an e-book or post "How do I publish my e-book?" on mosaicHUB or any writers group/forum for that matter.
Thanks soo much I truly appreciate all your feedback!