Our thanks to author and branding expert Julia Gometz for this guest post, a first-hand account of how she’s designed her book to be interactive with her website in order to better serve readers.

Hi fellow authors. I just published my first book that came out last week on Amazon (The Brandful Workforce – How Employees Can Make, Not Break Your Brand) and Shari asked me to write up a quick blurb for her blog. She says that you might be interested in how I integrated my website with the book to make it interactive and drive engagement with my readers. Here’s what I did, and feel free to check it out online at http://www.brandfulworkforce.com/book.

First, I started with a vision of the kind of “experience” I wanted my readers to have while reading my book. I first considered who would read it. Even though it’s a business book, I found that it has general appeal to anyone because it’s packed with anecdotes and examples of how employees can either love their products and services or hate them. I also included personal stories and those about my favorite brands such as Trader Joe’s, L’Occitane, JetBlue, and TD Bank.

So, considering that the audience was quite general, I wanted to set a conversational tone from the beginning of the book. That way, when opportunities to participate in the discussion came along and links were provided, the reader would feel interested and almost compelled to enter the dialogue.

Bottom-line: I believe that if you want to foster dialogue, the tone of the book and the experience of the reader, you need to encourage the reader to participate in the discussion. I didn’t want my book to be something that was read and then put down, never to be looked at again. The dialogue will hopefully encourage readers to stay engaged to see the discussion and continue to participate, long after they finish reading the book.

Second, I developed my website to be simple and easy to use, so when the reader clicks on a link to enter some thoughts or view the dialogue, it won’t be a hassle. My thinking is, that the first time you click on a link, it’s kind of test to see how it works. If it’s easy and interesting, you’ll do it again. And there are many opportunities to engage in dialogue throughout the book. 

Throughout the book I inserted links for discussion and thoughts at a specific point in which there would be some kind of reaction, either after a story or after a controversial or thought-provoking question.  Each topic had to have a unique link as I didn’t want the reader to have to click more than once to enter a comment.  So I bucketed the topics into a few categories and made sub-categories.  There are about thirteen unique links for dialogue.

Note that I did not invest a single dollar into my website to do any of this. I simply added pages and links in my book. If I start to get a lot of traffic, at that point, I may make an investment to have a better system for readers to input comments. If you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

Third, once my book was published and I was waiting for the e-version to come out, I realized that I should get colleagues to enter comments onto my webpages that link to the book.  I thought about when readers first click on any given link, the worst thing would be if it were blank – no comments. Nobody wants to be the first one to insert a comment and what if someone clicks simply to view the other comments? I am still working on this part. From one author to another, if you can contribute any comments to my site (www.brandfulworkforce.com/book), it would be appreciated!

Websites can attract book buyers. What I like about my website is that it offers a way for anyone to participate in the discussion, whether or not you’ve read the book. By participating in the discussion, visitors may be interested in buying the book. My plan, should the discussion on my website pick up, is to share some of the comments via my social media channels. This can foster more interest in the book and drive more traffic to the website, and encourage folks to buy the book.

I would love to get press attention, too – not just for the content of my book – but for the fact that this is one of the first business books that’s truly interactive. Do you know any other such books? If so, please let me know.  I was recently told to check out the book, How To Cook Everything. It’s apparently available as an e-book and an app. This is the most interactive book I’ve heard of, however I’d love to hear from you.

Can you make your book interactive with your website? Keep in touch and let’s share our experiences so we can all be successful!

Julia Gometz founded The Brandful® Workforce, a company that provides expertise to organizations on how a workforce can work “for” the brand, rather than “against” it. Her book, The Brandful® Workforce, introduces a first-ever roadmap for organizations on how to create and sustain the brand internally. She has collaborated with colleagues at Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies, as well as public and nonprofit organizations. Julia is an accomplished speaker engaging audiences internationally on the topic of people strategy.