by Rachelle Christensen
I think the most important key to a successful blog tour is organization. It’s tricky when you’ve scheduled 20-25 stops on your tour. You will need to answer questions, give reminders, and make sure each blogger has the information they need to participate fully. I keep a document or spreadsheet for each blog tour and keep track of things like who I invite to participate and their response, most reliable book reviewers, individual review and interview dates, email and web addresses, etc.
Jordan has covered some great information in this series, but you might be asking yourself, are blog tours really worth it? The answer to that is YES if you coordinate one correctly. If you don’t think the advice that Jordan has posted applies to you and that you can run a successful tour with a handful of unknown blogs, then no, a blog tour won’t benefit your book.
Blog tours are about seed-bedding. Have you heard the marketing phrase that a person needs to be exposed to an item anywhere from three to twenty times before they will purchase? Well, it’s true. So when an author decides to put their book on tour, they should be doing so for the exposure. Great reviews are priceless, but go look up a few books on Amazon. You might be surprised to see some well-known authors who have less than ten reviews, or you might be surprised to see some that have over 100. A blog tour creates buzz and plants seeds in prospective readers’ minds. Does this translate to hard sales? Not usually sales that you can measure, but it translates to many results that you might not even realize.
Here’s an example. Perhaps reader Jane hears about your book, then she sees some glowing reviews on your blog tour. The next time she is at the library, she asks them to order in your book. Reader Jane checks out your book and loves it. Now she is excited for the next book and because she enjoyed your book so much, she wants to buy the next one as soon as it’s available.
In the above example, you can see that I’m trying to share the vision of planting seeds. Sometimes you’ll get to enjoy an early harvest, other times the seeds will grow slowly and turn into a towering oak tree. Exposure is great for any business and the same goes for authors.
Say Thank you! I think it’s important to thank your blog tour participants individually and think about how you can extend that thanks in other ways. On a recent tour that I managed, we offered a special thank you gift to each blogger who posted their review on time and also on Goodreads and Amazon. It was a fun way to continue to get the bloggers invested in the tour and get the results wanted.
Stay positive. Look at each stop on your tour as a potential seed. Word of mouth is the best form of advertising and you never know who might see that post and decide to invest in your book. If you don’t see a huge jump in sales, don’t get discouraged. Remember, that you are offering readers many chances to get to know you and the quality of your writing. Think about other marketing avenues that you might use to piggyback on the blog tour. Giveaways are fun, as well as special “buzz-fests” or “book bombs” or hide-and-seek questions in the first chapter of your book. All of these work to increase visibility.
Have fun! Don’t be a stress-case if one of your reviewers misses their posting date. Life happens, and sometimes we have to pick up the pieces and be flexible. If I see that a reviewer hasn’t posted on their scheduled date, I send out a reminder just checking in and offer another date if they are unable to make it work that day. I certainly appreciate it when people are understanding of my brain cramps, so be courteous and keep things on the up side.
Keep a page on your website, blog, or sidebar with all of the participants and dates of the blog tour. When your blog tour is finished, make sure you have that page somewhere permanent in case you need to reference it.
There are many other benefits to blog tours, such as gathering usable endorsements from reviewers to be used for other marketing purposes and making lasting connections with your audience. Be willing to think outside the box to take advantage of every opportunity to create a successful blog tour—but most of all enjoy!
About the Author
Rachelle J. Christensen is an author who enjoys blogging and learning new marketing strategies. She organizes blog tours for a multi-million dollar worldwide company and has developed secrets for low-cost Internet marketing.
Her first novel, Wrong Number, was awarded Outstanding Book of the Year from the League of Utah Writers and was also a 2010 Whitney Finalist. Her second suspense novel, Caller ID, was released March 2012. She is also the author of a nonfiction book, Lost Children: Coping with Miscarriage for Latter-day Saints.
