{"id":6644,"date":"2017-05-23T07:03:28","date_gmt":"2017-05-23T11:03:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6644"},"modified":"2017-05-23T07:03:28","modified_gmt":"2017-05-23T11:03:28","slug":"the-successful-blog-tour-planning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6644","title":{"rendered":"The Successful Blog Tour: Planning"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"F

Guest Poster F M Meredith<\/p><\/div>\n

Authors often want to have a blog tour to promote their new books. Today and tomorrow guest poster F M Meredith tells us how to do it!<\/em><\/p>\n

Though there are companies that will arrange a blog tour for you for a price, you can create a better one yourself. Of course, the planning needs to begin long before your book is going to be available.<\/p>\n

Identifying the Blogs<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Find the blogs that you like best that also host authors. You might want to see whether they have many followers, though I\u2019ve not worried about this much. (Speaking for myself, a lot fewer people \u201cfollow\u201d my blog than visit it regularly–Vicki<\/em>)<\/p>\n

Approach each one and tell them a bit about your book and yourself and ask whether they would be willing to host you on your tour. If they say yes, then settle on a date, and keep good track of those dates!<\/p>\n

Be sure the blogs you choose allow comments. And it\u2019s best if they aren\u2019t moderating the comments. (If they do moderate, ask them to be sure and do it often on the day you\u2019ll appear on the blog.)<\/p>\n

Crafting the Content of Your Posts<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Find out what kind of post each host would like you to write for their blog\u2014try to do something different for each one. Some may want to do an interview, and if you have a lot of those, it\u2019s a good idea that after you cover the basics, you add some new information about yourself. Some blog owners have very particular ideas about what they want, be sure to follow their rules. In most cases, they\u2019ll probably tell you to pick your own topic.<\/p>\n

Some ideas for blog posts are: an interview with your main character\u2014or the villain; 10 things no one knows about you; what gave you the idea for this particular book; what you are going to do to promote the book besides the blog tour; the setting for the story; your best writing tips; a description of the place where you write or any writing rituals you follow; and of course an excerpt or a first chapter of your book. If a blog host also wants to review the book, that\u2019s great.<\/p>\n

Every blog post you send out should include a short bio, a blurb about the book, all of your links including the one enabling readers to buy the book. Add as attachments the book cover graphic and a photo of yourself. I think it\u2019s fun to send a different photo to some of the blogs just for variety.<\/p>\n

Add a Contest?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

To get people to visit all the blogs on your tour, you might plan a contest of some sort, with the winner being the person who leaves a comment on the most tour blogs. Some authors give away a copy of the book they are promoting, but since you\u2019re having the tour to get people to buy the book, it\u2019s better if you give away a different book or something else altogether. What\u2019s worked well for me is to give the winner the opportunity to be a character in one of my mysteries.<\/p>\n

TOMORROW: The Successful Blog Tour: Implementation<\/p>\n

The most recent novels of guest blogger\u2014and blog tour maven\u2014FM aka Marilyn Meredith, are Unresolved, <\/strong>thirteenth in the Rocky Bluff P.D. series, and Seldom Traveled, <\/strong>sixteenth in the Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery series. Find her at <\/em>http:\/\/fictionforyou.com<\/em><\/a> or <\/em>http:\/\/marilynmeredith.blogspot.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/em>
\n<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Authors often want to have a blog tour to promote their new books. Today and tomorrow guest poster F M Meredith tells us how to do it! Though there are companies that will arrange a blog tour for you for … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The Successful Blog Tour: Planning - popular publicity tool for authors, Part 1","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[62,174,64],"tags":[1040,1039],"class_list":["post-6644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authors","category-first-draft-blog","category-promotion","tag-blog-tour","tag-f-m-meredith"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1Ja","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6644"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6646,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6644\/revisions\/6646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}