As promised, we’re going to dig deeper into the strategy of initiating a successful blog tour to promote your eBook. Blog tours require a lot of logistics; planning, coordinating and communicating are critical. You may want to enlist the help of a virtual assistant or a branding-and-visibility expert to help you.
Step One. Reach out to bloggers and book reviewers to see if they will participate in your blog tour. Make it easy on yourself and create a Google form that interested reviewers can fill out. Be sure to include fields for their names, email addresses, websites, the dates they can participate and whether or not they want a review copy of the eBook.
Step Two: Create a blog tour badge; participants will post this badge on their site to indicate that they are part of your tour. The badge can be a simple graphic that somehow represents your eBook and indicates the dates of the tour.
Step Three: Compile a list of the participating bloggers; each participant will post the entire list with the dates, the links to the websites and the types of tour stops scheduled, so that people can follow the tour from one stop to the next.
Step Four: Have images (eBook cover, author photo and additional photos if needed) ready along with a solidly written eBook blurb and author bio.
Step Five: Fulfill the requests for individual bloggers. Some will ask for guest posts; some will ask for excerpts from the book to share; some will submit interview questions to be answered by the author.
Step Six: Several days before the start of the blog tour, send all participants the images, blurb, bio and tour list. Be sure to include a link to the eBook purchase page, a link to your website and links to your social media accounts. Tell all of the participants about any relevant news, such as the sale price of the eBook and how long it will be on sale. Send each individual participant their requested feature, and confirm the date they will publish their tour stop.
While that’s all it takes to get your blog tour up and running, your job doesn’t end there. As the author, you should be available to answer last-minute questions and provide additional information throughout the tour. You should also be sure to lavish thanks and praise on the participants by mentioning them on Facebook and Twitter. As each tour stop goes live, share the link to that stop and help the blogger get traffic. It’s a mutually-beneficial arrangement that can really give your sales a boost.
Share your blog tour experience with us!
