Your Short Book: The Bridge Content
Today’s article focuses on a section of a short book that I have developed and refined over the years and is one thing that separates my short, helpful book or shook™ recipe from every other type of nonfiction book out there.
The Bridge Content is one of the main reasons why the shook formula is so powerful for business owners, entrepreneurs, and corporate leaders who want to use their book as a positioning and marketing/sales tool.
This section represents a “bridge” between your Main Matter chapters and your “selling” chapters. Up to this point, you have shared helpful information, and now it’s time to connect the dots for your readers and share with them how you can specifically help them. Here are the three suggested chapters:
Who Relies on Us/Me chapter—I discovered this strategy from Dan Kennedy and tweaked its use for shook authors. Including this chapter is a smart strategy for your shook because it reassures readers that you serve people just like them-for a specific reason. This chapter allows readers to find himself/herself and learn the specific reason others like him/her work with you obtain/fix/strategize the specific reason articulated.
Your “Special Sauce” chapter—this chapter should describe your unique product or service advantage, which ideally is branded to you and your business. In my opinion, if you can develop this for your business, you have a valuable and unique advantage over your competition. Years ago, I wrote an entire newsletter about this.
The Next Step chapter—It’s critical your short, helpful books tells readers the next thing they must do in order to achieve the goal they were seeking when they first picked it up. I call this the “Active Call-to-Action,” and it’s the thing you want the reader to do after reading your shook. I like to keep this limited to one thing, so it’s clear and simple to do. Depending on your business, it could be to call you, visit you, fill out a survey, etc. Give explicit and detailed instructions on what to do next if they truly want to solve their problem or achieve their goal.
Business owners, entrepreneurs, and corporate leaders who work with me, get my personal help on developing power Bridge Content for their short book.
If you would like my help creating your own shook, schedule a Zoom meeting with me (link below).
