Thousands of business books are published each year, and few find an audience outside an author’s already existing community of colleagues and friends.

We are constantly looking for ways to help our clients’ books create the biggest impact possible by first mobilizing our clients’ existing networks, next mobilizing the networks of readers we’ve established, and then reaching out through social and digital media to create the biggest impact possible.

We know a book has traction when two things happen:

1. People are inspired to share the book and its content with their online communities, helping increase its reach.
2. People engage with our authors to access resources beyond the book.

One of the questions I’m asked most often is this one: how do you measure success? How do you quantify an ever expanding audience?

The most basic and reliable measure is the size of an author’s email subscriber list. Authors who have a large email list of subscribers interested in their content have a larger pool of people to whom they are becoming a valuable resource. The size of their list often determines the success of their launch. A larger list equals more book sales during launch week, more Amazon reviews posted, and more social sharing and reach of a book.

For this reason, we constantly seek ways to help our clients attract people to join their email lists.

One of the most powerful ways we’ve found is through the Credspark Quiz.

In late 2013, Weaving Influence partnered with CredSpark for help in publishing quizzes based on the topics of our authors’ books. Several Weaving Influence clients and friends, including Karin Hurt, Chip Bell, Dennis and Michelle Reina and Jamie and Maren Showkier published quizzes on CredSpark in 2014.

Here’s a recent and powerful case study:

Next week, we’ll launch Bonnie Marcus’ book, The Politics of Promotion. As part of our book launch services, we partnered with CredSpark to help Bonnie quiz her audience on what they knew (or didn’t) about the challenges of women being promoted. Here are some key insights that Bonnie gathered, by running a quiz.

• Bonnie’s audience has a good grasp on the differences between male and female networking behavior, as well as on the most effective practices around promoting one’s achievements.
• On the other hand, her audience has a poor grasp of the notion of Sponsorship (as distinct from Mentorship) and how it can advance womens’ career goals.
• Bonnie’s audience is 83% female, and 66% mid-level management or above.
• The Best Finding? 57% of people opted-in to Bonnie’s mailing list as a result of taking the quiz. Bonnie’s quiz engaged people deeply on her topic, and made people realize they could benefit from Bonnie’s guidance on an ongoing basis.

These statistic are powerful evidence that Credspark challenges drive our most important metric: opt-ins to an author’s mailing list.

With Bonnie’s expanded network, we created additional traction for her upcoming book launch.

We’d love to partner with you toward greater impact by driving growth of the metrics that matter most to you. How can we and our friends at CredSpark help you? Email me today to start the conversation!

Becky Robinson

I am the founder/CEO of the Weaving Influence team, the author of Reach: Creating the Biggest Possible Audience for Your Message, Book, or Cause, and the host of the Book Marketing Action Podcast. I’m a wife and mom of three kids, and I enjoy running, reading, writing, coffee, and dark chocolate.