Blogging and Product Creation

Hey guys.

My initial plan was to create a blog and get people to opt-in to build a list. I have written a few articles and am really enjoying the writing for my niche (subniche in self help) and have decided that I would like to create my own ebook to sell to my list. I have ideas for follow up products once I have a buyers list too, so I have plans for future growth.

My issue lies in how to go about writing the blog whilst product creating. The blog is an important part of the marketing plan for the book. But I'm a perfectionist, and I want my book to include everything on the topic that is necessary. This means my blog can only really feature whats in the book, but I don't want to just rehash the same material. And as I'm a perfectionist (and due to the important part my blog plays in marketing) I don't want to create a dumbed down version in the book.

So my issue is that I'm struggling to write fresh material for a blog post on a topic that has already been written about in my book. Any suggestions?

Thanks!

How about:
* industry news about your topic
* asking your readers questions or putting up polls about your topic and how it affects them
* interviews with or profiles of people involved with your topic
* success / disaster stories
* sneak peeks of your book

Thanks for your answer. There are some interesting ideas here which will be very useful.

I will definitely be throwing some industry news and interviews in there.

But the main point (I hope) of the blog is that its educational. Putting sneak peaks will work to a point, but don't want to give away too much content from the book. Do you rewrite these sneak peaks or just insert a section of a book directly into the blog?

First off, don't worry if there's a lot of overlap. A lot of people have a lot of overlap between their paid products and their blogs. The key is to provide tons and tons of value in your blog, then even more value in your book.

There's only so much you can convey in a blog. Let's say you're doing three posts a week. That's just three pages of content. An eBook might be 150 pages of content. That's a whole year worth of blog posts.

Bottom line, your eBook has a lot more meat than blog posts. Yes, you might cover the same topics, but it won't be in the same level of detail. Give more detail, give more examples, give step by step how-tos, share your personal stories, talk about common sticking points, etc. Elaborate.