Do you want more visibility for your books?
Run a blog tour. Running a blog tour can build excitement for your book, and expose your book to new audiences and make more book sales.
Benefits of a Blog Tour
- Get known to more readers.
- Get reviews.
- Show off your expertise.
- Sell books.
Important Elements of a Blog Tour
Here are the things to decide on before you run your tour:
- Time Period: Decide how many days, what days of the week (weekends or not; holidays or not) you want to run the tour for example one stop a week for 12 weeks
30 stops within a month
10 stops in two weeks.
The trick to designing a blog tour is to determine how much time you want to invest in this promotion activity. If you have lots of time, do a 30-day tour. If you don’t have much time or are busy during the week, you can organize a tour of 1 stop per week, - Blogger Types: There are many kinds of bloggers who love, love, love to read and review books, and host writers on their sites. A special breed of bloggers exist and call themselves ’book bloggers.’ They each have favorite kinds of genres to review, with their own rules about what they will or will not feature. In addition to book bloggers, search out experts in your field and subject matter expertise, including bloggers who focus on such topics as writing, freelancing, mommy-entrepreneur sites, independent publishing, etc.
- Giveaways:Giveaways build buzz and excitement.
Give away an eBook or physical book at every blog stop. Ask people to comment or answer a question relevant to the blog topic. This helps weed out those prize hounds who just want free things, and helps focus on those people who want something free AND are your potential readers and fans. - Writing: Bloggers like a guest post that features an aspect of your book. Blog Hosts like Question and Answer pieces, feature an excerpt, and/or a review. Or a combination of the above. If you’re really busy and feel like you don’t have ideas, you can offer to do just a Q&A.For guest posts, create a subject list related to your book. Focus it so that it’s easy for the bloggers to pick a topic they know will interest their readers. For example, a client’s list of topics for guest posting was: writing historical fiction, clothing and customs 1700, Costa Rica heritage, environmental concerns, and religious freedom. Her book was set in Costa Rica in the 1700’s
During your blog tour
- During the tour you’ll want to share about it! You can share your blog tour stops on Twitter, FaceBook Fan page, your blog or site (I recommend having your blog schedule there), yahoo groups, your newsletter, and emails to your fans and readers.
- Comments: Participate in your own tour. Bloggers and readers are participating in the tour and want to meet you. Get involved and thank them personally and comment back.
After your blog tour:
- Thank your blog hosts.
- Remind them to post reviews.
- Ask yourself what worked and what you’d like to do differently, if you ran another blog tour.
Blog tours are really beneficial in getting the word out about your new book.. They can be time consuming. If you need some help,just contact me.