Creating an Effective Blog Tour Portal

As mentioned in the previous post, the centralized website was a key component of Mary DeMuth’s blog tour. From the end of June through mid-August, the website was viewed nearly 700 times. From my perspective, that’s around 700 emails with questions or requests for information that I did not have to answer. The website also allowed participants to access the information they needed at any time of the day or night and provided a consistent location to find it. They didn’t have to remember where they filed all of the emails about the tour or worry that they accidentally deleted it.

So for those of you who wish to set up one for your next tours, I’ve outlined the pieces that were included. While it may feel overwhelming to set up, the reduced number of questions and emails is worth the time and effort. Every piece of information was used by at least some of the participants, so I recommend including it all.

Welcome page: Included a welcome message, blog tour instructions, overview of the posting options, posting schedule and contact information. See a sample here.

Sidebar: Was visible from every page in order to allow easy navigation around the entire site

* APT Home
* APT Summary – link to a page summarizing all of the posts on the tour
* Book Excerpt – link to Mary’s book excerpt on the publisher’s website
* Interview Example – link to a good example of an author interview
* Book Review Example – link to a good example of a book review
* Topic Reflection Example – link to a good example of a topic reflection
* Buy Post Example – link to a page we set up with an example of a buy post
* Mary Interview – link to a page we set up with the text of a canned interview
* Book Cover Image – link to the image, remember to make the dimensions small enough to be easily used on a blog
* Photo of Mary – link to the image, same note to remember as above
* HTML Codes – link to a page we set up that allowed bloggers to literally cut and paste all the HTML codes they might need (see additional info below)
* Blog Links – link to a page where bloggers could click on any blog participating in the tour, organized by participating week
* Other Important Links – links to Mary’s website and blog, where to purchase the book, my blog, and Marcus Goodyear’s blog
* Contact Mary – mailto link to email Mary, when you clicked on this link it opened a new message in your default mail program with the subject “APT Tour”
* Contact Tour Director – mailto link to email me, when you clicked on this link it opened a new message in your default mail program with the subject “APT Tour”

HTML Code page: Provided the HTML code to create a link to Amazon, the book excerpt, Mary’s website, Mary’s blog, and to all of the participants’ blogs (by week). Also provided code for posting a picture of the book cover and the complete buy post.

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How do you know if a blog tour is right for you?

As you consider whether or not it’s worth your time and effort to plan a blog tour, think about the following questions:

1. What is your goal(s) for the blog tour?
What do you hope to accomplish by doing a blog tour? Think about this in both general and specific terms. Remember that your goals should be specific enough that you can define what achieving them looks like, whether through your gut feeling or with hard statistics. So far, our studies have shown blog tours to be ineffective at selling books in a measurable way. They seem to be effective at initiating relationships and building upon networks, which may eventually translate into sales, but don’t expect a blog tour to give an immediate boost to the sale of your book or product.

2. How does this fit into your overall marketing plan?
A blog tour should not make up your entire marketing plan; it’s only one small piece. Your blog tour should support your overall marketing goals and supplement the other activities you will conduct. Consider ways to leverage other pieces of your marketing plan to boost your blog tour and vice versa. For example, if you will be conducting a radio interview, consider mentioning your blog tour during the spot. Be sure to include the dates and times of your radio interviews within the blog tour information as well.

3. Why are you considering a blog tour?
This seems like an obvious question, but you really need to think through the answer. While a blog tour is cost effective because of limited overhead, it still requires dedicated time on your part. Designing and organizing the tour is definitely an investment of time if you want to do it well. Even if you hire someone to organize it for you, you still must be available for interviews, guest posting and making comments.

4. What are your expectations about the tour, how it’s run, how it’s designed?
Take a look at how other blog tours have run and decide what you like and dislike about their design. Think about your goals and consider the type of design that will best support them.

After thinking through these four questions, you should be in a better place to discern whether or not a blog tour should be a part of your marketing plan.

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