As someone who handles all kinds of content for a living—print, direct, digital, to name a few—and reads the latest b2b marketing news, I noticed a trend emerging over the past year. Everyone seemed to be talking about e-books and how they're effective content marketing tools. Not only that, but I was receiving all kinds of e-books from various industry influencers. So I wasn't surprised when Godfrey decided to produce our very own.

I quickly took on the role of editor, compiling submissions from our in-house experts and editing entries so all the minute details were consistent throughout. It took a lot of teamwork and collaboration of various roles within the agency to pull off this new endeavor. We had a project manager, art director, graphic designer, IT expert, software developer and a few others providing support where needed. So what did I learn throughout this process?

5 Tips for Creating a B2B e-Book

Know your audience and understand their needs and challenges. If you don't, you'll just be spending a lot of time developing something that no one will care about or even worse, no one will read. 

Have a goal. Ask yourself: What do you want your e-book to accomplish? What do you want your reader to do after having read it?

Establish a clear content direction. Remember when I said it's important to know your audience? That will help drive what you should be writing about.

Workflow, workflow, workflow! Identify your key players and get that timeline written down so everyone knows their role and expectations are aligned. Important factors to consider are copy deadlines, proofing, graphics, multimedia considerations, design and QA/QC.

Create a distribution and tracking strategy. I worked with our media, social media and PR specialists to identify relevant distribution tactics across paid and owned channels. I then referred to our analytics guru to determine success metrics. From there I created an editorial calendar identifying all tactics so we could keep track of our efforts and measure them all in one place.

It was exciting to take a proposed idea and see it to fruition. Along the way, I got to work with really smart, passionate people. And, I got a first-hand look at the inner workings of what it takes when everyone from different backgrounds comes together to support a common goal. 

I think it's really important to note that during this endeavor, the silos came down and it was a true collaboration. So check out our e-book, Jumpstart Your B2B Marketing, and let us know how we did. I hope you find some valuable insight that will help with your planning for next year.