Reading a book seems very low tech in this current digital age. But don’t underestimate the words on a physical page.
While many bloggers do their reading online, you can gain an advantage by shutting off the computer and reading a book offline. Here are three reasons to head over to your local bookstore.
1. To Improve Credibility
Books are still perceived as trusted sources of authority. If you become well read that you quote books often, your credibility will increase. I felt that Brian Clark of Copyblogger knew what he was talking about because he quoted the classic advertising and copywriting books. He was someone who had real expertise because he had learned from the giants in the past.
2. To Go Deeper in a Niche
Online content by nature gives you a shallow perspective. The content is short to please the short attention span of the average internet user. On the other hand, reading a book allows you to concentrate more deeply and really learn about a topic. This prolonged exposure to a topic helps you create more in-depth posts than your competitors.
Also, books can give you topic ideas for evergreen content. Online content especially blog posts are many times about current issues or news that will fade away soon. However, books are usually about topics that have more lasting value.
3. To Differentiate Your Content
For many bloggers, their only reading is done online. So if you’re reading books, you’ll be exposed to content many of your peers are not consuming.
This will help you avoid the “echo chamber,” a phenomenon where the bloggers in a niche are all talking about the same thing. You’ll be drawing inspiration from different sources so your content will be different from your peers.
Over to You
How often do you read books?
Have you ever drawn inspiration from a book for your blog?
How does you offline reading time compare to your online reading time?
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11 thoughts on “3 Reasons Bloggers Should Read Books”
Reading offline can really help one in the area of creating ever green content as well as increase d level personal development. Have read quite a lot of books offline like the Rich Dad Series, Good to Great etc. What i do now is to read at least 2 hours a day. By the way, this post is very informative.
I’m 100% agree with you. Today, with the rapid growth of internet user around the globe, there are so many people who writes almost the same content everyday. Maybe the only different is only on the title, the writing style,or the keywords. So, when we do our research online about one topic, we can find at least 30 to 50 articles that have the same topics. So, it really helps a lot when we also do our research on school or public library, because there we can find a lot great knowledge that can improve the quality of our content.
i have done this for a while it is a great way to gain ideas and also i find it very relaxing sat on the balcony on a weekend chilling out reading and coming up with some blog posts all at the same time great post by the way.
All great tips.. this should apply to anyone tht has a online business or blog.
More you read, more you know, the more helpful you can be to your readers.
I think two of the best books I read this year are “Ready, Fire, Aim” and “The Answer”. The writing on both of them are very tight on their topics which center about identifying who your customer is and the emotional needs that customer has, and then finally how to go about innovating, creating value to satisfy that customer’s emotional needs. Very good books for zeroing in at the heart of all businesses.
books are important and we also drive many ideas for our posts.
Dee,
I am reading this one first – “Yes! 50 scientifically proven ways to be persuasive” – Goldstein and so far, it’s excellent. So much to take from it and use within my on-line business.
Andrew
I think that you are absolutely correct. I do believe that alot of readers are finding ‘duplicated’ content on blogs within their fields of interest. I believe that press releases are important to follow too.
Andrew, I have heard great things from the Goldstein book. People say it has a lot of non-intuitive persuasion tips.
I 100% agree with you, my reading habits have helped me lot, specially when I moved in into blogging. I spent atleast 1 hour a day reading a book or blogs. But it is atleast, depending on my mood and available time it can take upto 5 hours!
I read a fair amount off-line but not as much as I would like.
I did get 4 books for Christmas:
“Yes! 50 scientifically proven ways to be persuasive” – Goldstein
“Crush It!” – Vaynerchuk
“Yes! 50 secrets from the science of persuasion” – Goldstein
“Trust Agents” – Brogan
I’m hoping they will make a difference to my on-line business (once read).
Andrew
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