How to organize a #Blogtour in 6 steps

How to organize a #Blogtour in 6 steps

Yesterday post was a book review composed as part of a blog tour. Now the question is: what exactly is a blog tour and how to go around organizing one to promote your book?

This is what this post is about

A blog tour consists in booking posts about your book in a number of blogs of which the main topic matches your book. Having your book talked about is the key to getting exposure, hence readers, so the logic is easy to get.

How does one goes about organizing a blog tour?

The first step is to have blog. Those who do not yet have a blog should begin building one now, even if the book is not yet finished. Marketing strategies start long before the book is ready to print or digitally ready. Since, without marketing, a book does not get seen nor read, any writer looking to get published has to include marketing in the “to do” list.

There are many articles on the net about building a blog, so we will not expand on that here

The second step is to identify blogs that would be a good match for the book. Say, someone writing murder mysteries should run a Google search limited to blogs and select four or five dozens that are devoted to murder mysteries.

 Out of these, a few factors can then help identifying the most efficient ones for promotion purposes.

Google rank used to be a good indicator but is not really the main one anymore.

Since the purpose of a blog tour is to gain immediate exposure, it is important to evaluate the social media value of the targeted blog, i.e. are they linked to Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, MySpace etc. There are a few ways to gauge the value of their membership with social networks, here are a few for Twitter and Facebook:  

Google rank used to be a good indicator but is not really the main one anymore.

Since the purpose of a blog tour is to gain immediate exposure, it is important to evaluate the social media value of the targeted blog, i.e. are they linked to Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, MySpace etc. There are a few ways to assess the value of their membership with social networks, here are a few for Twitter and Facebook:

1.       On Twitter:
   1. The first indicator is the number of followers and the tweeting frequency of the blogger’s own posts.
   2. The second indicator is to run a search for the blogger’s Twitter anchor name (i.e. epublishabook for this blog) and see how much his network is interacting and helping spreading the word.
2.       On Facebook:
   1. First check if the blogger also has a Facebook page. It there is one, the number of “Fans” or “Friends” is usually visible in the left column
   2. For the pages, as opposed to profiles, Facebook now has a counter for the number of people talking about the page. So if a page has thousands of fans and no-one is talking about the page nor are there any interactions visible on the wall, it means that the page is not relevant for marketing purposes. On the other hand, a page with a few hundred fans and over 25% people talking about it is actually viewed it and therefore the page has marketing value (for those using personal profile, looking at the interaction with friends on the wall gives an indication as to its marketing value).

After having selected the best blogs to include in the blog tour, it is now time to contact the blog owners and lodge a request.

The third step is therefore to contact the bloggers If they have no contact details on their blog, there might be a way to reach them through Twitter, Facebook or other social networks. The most basic request is to invite to participate in the blog tour, offering a link to your own blog and a free copy of your book in exchange for publishing a book review at a specific date, or a Q&A with the author ran on the participating blog at pre-established date.

In addition there are a few perks that can be added. Here are a few examples:

1. A contest between the participating blogs for the highest hit rate on the post about the book with a prize attached.
2. A lottery for all visitors commenting on posts participating to the blog tour, also with a prize attached
3. A link to a quiz that would have to be included in all participating blogs, with a prize attached for randomly selected winners

The fourth step is to advertize the upcoming blog tour. This of course is done on the author’s blog and through the authors own social networks, and ideally, by the participating blogs (the latter much more likely if there are nice prizes involved ) Feel free to share additional idea in the  comments, everyone will benefit…

The fifth step is to participate in the blog tour, either by being on-line for Q&A or by commenting on guest blogs or any other way that matches the creative way the tour has been set up.

The sixth step is to cash in on the book sales   No need to expand on that one, is there? Just watch the sales figure grow and smile…

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