The budget book junket: Blog tours

Most online book marketing campaigns focus on bringing readers to your site. The other side of the coin, and one that can yield bigger results faster, is an outreach campaign -- going where part of your potential readership already congregates.

You can introduce your book to more readers with a series of appearances on other blogs, known as a "blog tour," sometimes called "guest blogging" or a "virtual book tour."

Blog tours are especially valuable for authors unable to travel, uncomfortable with public speaking, or whose small audience makes touring impractical. Blog tours can expose your book to a far larger audience than a traditional bookstore tour, and requires much less time and money.

Blog tours are a win-win for the host blogger, who gets free content for his blog plus affiliate commissions from book sales.

Here are the essential elements of a blog tour:

• A short book excerpt displayed on the host blog previewing the tour appearance.
• A one-day appearance where you submit an opening statement – a short essay or commentary on the topic of your book, opening the floor for discussion.
• Follow-up visits for the next four to seven days to answer questions and comments from the blog audience.

Targeting host blogs

Your first step in arranging a blog tour is selecting your target blogs: the most popular, influential blogs read by your book’s target audience. You’re probably already aware of some likely candidates. But since blogs can gain readership quickly, it’s worthwhile to survey the field periodically, so you don’t overlook a big opportunity.

Unfortunately, there is no complete, current resource that ranks blogs by subject matter, popularity, authority, or quality. You need to reach your own conclusions by the sampling content yourself.

Start your search here:

• Technorati.com. This blog tracking site lists the top 100 most popular blogs at Technorati.com/pop/blogs. To find relevant niche content, consult its search engine at Technorati.com/Discover, where you can search by keywords.
• Blogsearch.Google.com. Type in keywords related to your book. You’ll need to screen out the results you get from personal blogs which focus on the blog author and get little traffic.