How to Have a Successful Blog Tour - Part 1

 

I've asked Colette, my favorite blog tour operator, from ABG Reads Book Tours to offer authors some tips on book tours. Whether you contract with a tour company or DIY, here's her great suggestions:

Having a successful blog tour is a lot like matchmaking - it takes a lot of misses to get it right, but when the spark happens, magic ignites! Here are some tips to take the mystery out of finding readers for your tour. 

•  Timing - The most important part of having a successful blog tour is giving bloggers enough time to put you in their schedule! If you contact bloggers at the last minute, don’t be surprised to get a lot of nos. However, the more time you have to schedule the tour the more bloggers you will be able to find. Most work 2 to 3 months ahead of time, with the bigger blogs sometimes working 4 months ahead for reviews.
•  Approachability - When contacting bloggers be sure to include their name if it’s on their blogs or the name of their blogs in the email. Be sure to have a synopsis of the book and the cover in the email. First impressions are key: I have found putting a one line description after the initial request to join the blog tour works wonder. You want to capture readers attention from the very beginning. Don’t send out mass emails if you can avoid it. Bloggers can tell that they are mass emails and are less likely to respond to them.
•  Genre specific blogs - You want build an audience, and to do that the best way is to find blogs that read the genre that you write in. A lot blogs (like mine, ABuckeye Girl Reads) read cross genres, but there are a lot that only read certain genres like Young Adult, Erotica or mysteries. If you find blogs that read your genre, they will have readers that read that genre as well. If you write Urban Fantasy, you don’t want to go to a blog that focuses mainly on Young Adult. Almost all bloggers have a review policy - all you have to do is read it to see what genres they read. Here is mine: http://lovesromances.blogspot.com/p/my-review-policy.html

Here are some blogger databases to help you find readers:

http://indiebookreviewer.wordpress.com/

http://bookbloggerdirectory.wordpress.com/

http://hampton-networks.com/

http://yabookblogdirectory.blogspot.com/p/ya-book-blogger-list.html

• Originality - Don’t be afraid to be creative!! Instead of doing a typical guest post that just answers one question, think about doing a playlist that goes along with your book or a top ten list that is fun but also tells readers about your book. Think about doing themed guest posts throughout the tour. Take the readers on a tour of the world you created.
  
• Giveaways - A great way to drive traffic to the posts that you do on blogs is by having a giveaway. The giveaway doesn’t have to be about your book. It can be a giveaway that has themes from your book, chocolate, a book bag, bookmarks, a gift card, or a past title. 

Colette’s Bio: 

 
I have a passion for books in all genres, but have a weakness for romances. I started the blog A Buckeye Girl Reads 3 years ago, and through that blog have worked with many authors. I discovered much to my surprise, that I loved helping them get their book noticed by as many people as possible and started ABG Reads Book Tours.  Hobbies outside of reading are sparse, but include: cooking, baking, traveling and writing.  

Find Colette and her Tours
ABG Reads Book Tours
Twitter | Facebook| A Buckeye Girl Reads

Thanks, Colette, for visiting. Please come back and tell us what to do during the tour.

Part 2: Now You Need to Get People to Visit Your Book Author Website

Welcome back Phyllis Zimbler Miller for Week 2.

Last week you offered tips for an author's website. What's next?

Blogging can be a book author’s best friend (after Twitter, which I’ll explain below).  First, don’t groan.  You’re a writer, so write.

A blog on your website is even better than a standalone blog because all that fresh content (and you will commit to blogging at least three times a week) makes the search engines like your book author website better.  (Full disclosure again:  I didn’t know this when I first started blogging so my book’s blog is separate; it’s at www.mrslieutenant.blogspot.com)

And blogging is one reason to have a book author website before your book is published – it’s a great way to start the author-reader relationship.

If you are a nonfiction author, it’s pretty clear what you’ll write blog posts about.  Whatever your book topic is on.

And if you are a fiction author, don’t despair.  There are all kinds of things you can blog about – from recipes of your book’s locale (Thailand perhaps) to actual detective techniques (for mystery novels) to writing strategies.

Great, you’re blogging.  Now you have to get people to read your blog.

While Facebook (where you can have a group or fan page for your book) and LinkedIn are two of the most effective social networking sites, Twitter is the goose that lay the golden egg in my opinion.  Why?  Because, once you learn how to use Twitter effectively, it is the easiest way to get in front of people interested in your topic in a non-invasive and genuinely helpful manner.

Again, if you have a nonfiction book, you share information related to this topic, including information that does NOT come from you.  And you answer questions on this topic if you can.

If you have a fiction book, you interact with all the other fiction authors on Twitter and share writing tips, publishing tips, and your worse nightmares (your books aren’t available at the Borders author panel).  Through your tweets you share with others and become a real person to them.  And if they read fiction they should be interested in checking out what you’ve written.

One of the biggest pluses of Twitter (besides the 140-character limit for each tweet and not having to open email to read the message) is that you get only 160 characters for your bio and only one hot link.  (Currently LinkedIn has three hot links available in your profile and is there even a limit on Facebook?) 

Upload a good headshot of yourself (not your book cover – people like to interact with people, not inanimate objects), write an interesting (truthful) bio, and link to your website or blog. 

Then start slowly, learning as much as you can about Twitter etiquette and how to tweet worthwhile information for your followers.  (Do NOT -- unless you wrote a cookbook -- tweet what you ate for dinner regardless of whether you see other people tweet this.) 

One final word of caution that has to do with your website, your blog and your outreach efforts:   

This is NOT a three-month project 

of book promotion and you stop after three months.  

This is a three-year project or more of promoting your book.

Commit to the long haul, to continually learning new strategies, and to keeping an open mind about new possibilities, joint ventures, and new ideas.  Remember, you’re sharing your hard work with the world because you believe in what that hard work produced.  Now you just have to make it easier for people to learn about your hard work and want to partake of it.

Thanks Phyllis, for all your advice. 


Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is an Internet business consultant whose power marketing website is http://www.MillerMosaicLLC.com.
Her company builds book author websites and provides other book marketing services.

Download now her free report on 

“Power Marketing’s Top 3 Internet Marketing Tips” 

from http://www.CalltoActionWebsites.com

and check out her company’s information package

“What You Should Know About Marketing-Driven Websites” 

at www.millermosaicllc.com/website-package