Juiced On Writing

This is the final part of a brief series of posts on hosting a blog book tour, from the blog host’s perspective. In Part 1 I looked at my own experiences, and the benefits of hosting such virtual book tours. In Part 2 I provided some steps for planning and hosting the event. In Part 3, I provided a simple list of methods to have fun with the author. In this final post, I hope to provide some promotional ideas you can use as the blog host for part of a blog book tour.

Part 4 : Promoting a Blog Book Tour as a Blog Host

13 Ways to Promote the Blog Book Tour as a Blog Owner

Although the author will no doubt be promoting his or her full tour, it will benefit you to promote the tour yourself. If done successfully, your blog may become a creditable stop over for other book tours also, providing some interesting posts for both you and your readers.

Here are some methods I’ve seen work in promoting your author stopover on your blog : -

Promoting in Advance of the Stopover

1. Promote the upcoming tour and your own stopover date in advance on your blog. Post about this stopover and the tour itself, linking to the author’s promotional website.
2. Perhaps even publish your review of the book in advance – which you will refer to on the day, of course.
3. Use the media / promotional pack contents in advance, to build excitement towards the actual stop-over day.
4. Think about some taster or tease posts (see Fun Ways in Part 3 of this blog series for more on this) if appropriate.
5. A blog book tour is an excellent and legitimate excuse to use your social networking prowess. Post about it on Facebook, or Twitter.
6. If you’re a member of a writing community online, post a thread about the event there. Most writers are interested in hearing from fellow authors, and in new promotional techniques.
7. If you’re a member of a local book club (this may work for virtual clubs also), then promote the tour there also. Many book lovers would love the opportunity to make contact with a real life author, even virtually. They can be asked for some questions to put to the author also.
8. Consider promoting the book tour through friendly local shops or bookstores also. Put up a free advertising card in shop windows or noticeboards, telling them of the event, and include your blog URL.

Promoting After the Blog Book Tour

1. Provide a sidebar graphic or button to allow blog readers to find the posts easily. Or a banner.
2. Perhaps provide a static contents page, with linked bullet items to all of the material and posts from the tour.
3. If you have a lot of content from the tour, consider publishing the whole stopover in e-book / PDF form for download for your readers.
4. Or provide highlights of the blog tour in your blog newsletter.
5. After a few weeks, contact the author and ask them for any statistics from the blog tour (hopefully they should have seen an increase in book sales) and post a summary post from your own content with this follow-up news.

Blog Book Tours appear a lot of work for both authors and the blogs hosting them, but the fringe benefits can be fun, and provide an interesting addition to your own blog content. I hope you have fun hosting such tours if they do come your way.

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