The Complete Guide To Book Blog Tour Success
Did you know you could tour the world without ever leaving your home?
And we’re not talking about Street View on Google Maps.
Meeting fans and potential readers while on a book tour can be so rewarding. But the internet plays an increasingly important role in book sales, so you can’t ignore the online crowd.
A popular way to promote your book online is with a book blog tour.
When done right, they expose your book to potential readers who would not have otherwise even known about you or your new release.
To help you utilize this handy marketing tool, we’ve compiled everything you need to know to create a successful book blog tour.
What is a blog tour?
A blog tour is similar to a book tour where authors would go to different book or coffee shops and speak about their books to promote them. The difference is that it’s a completely online tour taking place on book bloggers’ platforms.
Note: Although we’re saying “blogs,” this same strategy can apply to featuring on podcasts, YouTube channels, webinars, or any other type of online media.
During a virtual book tour, you find blogs with big followings of readers interested in your genre or niche. You then ask them for an opportunity to write about your new book.
This is a great marketing opportunity for authors to reach a larger audience than a traditional book tour would. You can use this guest post to add links that send interested visitors to your website and your social media platforms.
A blog tour works well if you find the right blogs to be featured on.
Some agents can help you set up your blog tour, but if you’d prefer to put in the work yourself, it is manageable.
Benefits of Doing an Online Book Tour
You’ll have to put effort into coming up with original content to post on multiple blogs. So, you may be wondering if all that effort is worth it.
The short answer is yes!
Most established blogs have built up a decent-sized email list. Let’s say minimally 10K subscribers, often way more.
Even if your blog post gets read by 20% of their email list (a fairly average open rate), that’s thousands of readers who are newly exposed to your books. Multiply that by the number of blogs you tour on and you can reach tens of thousands of engaged readers!
It can bring you and your book a lot of attention and publicity from an already engaged audience and ultimately help increase book sales.
Blog tours help you
- Raise awareness
- Get more book reviews
- Get referral links to your website
- Build relationships with book promoters
Raise awareness
A blog tour helps you get your book in front of the eyes of new readers. But it also raises awareness for readers who have read your previous works.
Only superfans will watch out for your book releases like hawks, the rest of your readers may be oblivious to it.
A book blog tour will ensure anyone who’s enjoyed your writing will hear about your book.
Plus, the more people hear about your book, the more sales you’ll likely make.
Get you more book reviews
Imagine one of these bloggers writes a review that sings your book’s praises…their followers will be way more interested in your book!
Getting a professional book review from a respected source helps readers decide to buy your book.
This kind of review often convinces new readers to buy your book far more than an Amazon review because they’ve already come to trust the opinion of the blog they follow.
Getting referral links to your website
Another effective element of having a blog tour is getting referral links to your author website.
Once they’re on your site, your reader magnet, for example, a free book, will entice them to sign up for your author newsletter. This is a great way to nurture them to become book buyers.
Also, Google sees links to your site as votes of confidence. This helps your author SEO. This means that by getting your book featured on a blog tour you will get links to your website which will help you rank better on Google.
Build relationships with book promoters
Don’t underestimate the power of who you know when it comes to marketing your book.
Some of the people you reach out to may have connections in TV, international conferences or conventions, big publishing houses, or other amazing platforms.
By putting yourself out there and offering upfront value to their audiences you could be taking the first meaningful step in a bigger marketing move for your books and author career.
How Does a Blog Tour Work?
When it comes to online book tours, much like a normal book tour, it takes planning and organization.
When you reach out to different websites and ask to be featured, some blog owners will ask for payment. In some cases, you should decline these offers.
If they’re only interested in your work to get paid to feature on their blog, they aren’t going to be passionate about the content you’re contributing either. They may not even promote it to their mailing list.
Note: Be sure to read the fine print. See how their book promotion services work before submitting your blog suggestion so you understand what guest posting would be like on their platform.
There are some sites (like BookBub) where paid promotion can be very effective. This is not the same thing though. Paying for advertising on a book promotion site is quite different from getting featured as a guest writer or featured guest on another blog.
During a blog tour, you may write guest posts and feature pieces for the blogger to use. Other than that all you’ll have to do is respond to comments (if required) and thank the blog for allowing you to be featured.
It’s usually also asked that you share the post on your social channels and mailing list, but that’s really up to you.
When To Do Your Blog Tour
As soon as your book’s publication date is official you can start putting together the necessary details to share with your mailing list and social media platforms.
About a couple of months before the date you must reach out to the blogging sites to propose your blog tour.
Note: Be sure to have review copies ready to be shared with the blogging sites that opt-in for your blog tour so they can share reviews on day 1 of your book’s launch.
Your blog tour could last between 1 to 2 weeks, depending on your genre. For example, for popular genres on the internet like YA or Romance, you could have your blog tour run for 2 weeks since there are many bloggers for these genres.
How to Organize a Blog Tour
Follow the steps below to help put together your book blog tour plans.
- Find blog tour opportunities
- Brainstorm ideas
- Create blog content
- Promote your blog content
- Follow up on opportunities
- Nurture your new audience
Finding virtual book tour opportunities
The first step when organizing a blog tour is preparing to reach out to all the blogs you’ll feature on. Remember, you don’t have to limit yourself to only blogs. Reach out to podcasts, YouTube channels, or any other media that make sense as well.
The first step to take is to research different blogs or media channels that fit the genre or subject of your book.
You can start this by doing a simple Google search and see which blogs have your target audiences.
List of virtual book tour opportunities
Here is a list of potential blogs to reach out to so you can get started. Note, that some have more intense submission processes than others and may have changed since we posted this blog so check the guidelines on each before you reach out.
Virtual book tour spreadsheet
Create a spreadsheet to track the blogs you want to reach out to. You can copy-paste the table below into a spreadsheet to get started.
Create different columns for:
- The blog owner/editor’s name
- The website of the blog
- The email address of who you’re dealing with to pitch your idea
- If they accepted or not
- When you need to submit your blog post by
Here’s the spreadsheet template:
| Name | Website | Replied Y/N | Submission Deadline | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jess Blake | website.com | jb@website.com | Y | 9 Aug |
The researching part of the outreach is not something you should rush through.
Once you have found the blogs that you would like to reach out to, you need to do a bit of investigative work on their website.
Things to keep in mind before reaching out are:
- When was their last post
- Do they have comments and likes on their posts
- Are they active on social media
- Have they got guest posts already
- Do they say how big their mailing list is
The reason to keep these things in mind is that you want to have your books on blogs that have an active community otherwise your efforts will be in vain.
The whole point is to get new people to discover your work, not just post content on a dead website or little-known author platform.
Drafting the outreach email
All your research will be a waste if you don’t approach your potential blog tour hosts with care.
Think about how many emails you discard from your own inbox without reading it…it’s a lot, right?
You’ll have to do your best to ensure your email does not fall victim to this.
Make sure the subject and preview of your email are intriguing but not clickbaity or spammy.
Then when it comes to the body of your email, it needs to be personalized and comprehensive.
If your email sounds generic and doesn’t consider the needs of the blogger, they’ll likely delete it without a thought.
And if you fail to mention all the crucial details like dates, times, expectations, etc. they may be too busy to email back and ask for all of this. It’s easier for them to forget and move on.
But if you type up a really good email, you leave less resistance making it easier for them to say yes!
Note: Give the recipients ample time to respond and refrain from creating a blog tour schedule that will rush them through their process.
Brainstorm ideas
Now that you have come up with a list of people to reach out to, it’s time to brainstorm your guest post to pitch to them.
When it comes to pitching a blog tour or a guest post it’s important to make sure that the pitch has information in it that is personal to each blog so that the readers don’t think it is just a spam email. Put an interesting and personal spin on your idea.
This is why the research part is so important. Find something you love about each blog and mention it.
Also, mention how the guest post or tour could benefit the blog.
You can also pitch a couple of ideas you would like to write about if you want to give some options.
Create blog content
Now that you’ve reached out and pitched the ideas and they’ve been accepted, it’s time to create the content.
When creating the content make sure that it is 100% original and written by you. Don’t be boring or generic. Use your own voice and unique author brand. The whole point of this book blog tour is for a new audience to get to know you and your books.
When reaching out to multiple blogs and writing on similar topics it’s important to ensure the content isn’t identical.
Ensure that each piece truly adds value to the blog they’re being sent to, because if it doesn’t they may not want to host you again for your next blog tour.
Promote your blog content
When it comes to promoting your blog tour it’s a mutual effort between the host blog and yourself.
Some great ways to spread the word are :
- Sharing on social media
- Personally informing your top fans or your book launch team
- Sharing it with your mailing list
- Creating a tour schedule on your website with links
- Asking others to share the posts and links
Follow up on opportunities
So now that you’ve done a few guest blogs on your blog tour, it is time to follow up with them.
You should write a personal thank you to each blog for their support and for allowing you to post. You can even mention that you would be open to posting again. This will make doing a blog tour for your next book much easier.
You also need to make sure that they have everything they need, such as the blog post itself and any books, prizes, giveaways, or any important element that could be included in your tour.
Nurture your new audience
Something authors often forget to do is tend to the new followers and email subscribers you’ve gained from your blog tour.
Make sure you use this momentum.
Stimulate them with content on the channels they’ve followed you on. You want to motivate them to buy your book and become a reviewer.
In this way, you get the most out of the gains you’ve just had on your blog tour.
Measuring Your Blog Tour’s Success
Wondering how you’ll be able to tell if your book blog tour worked as intended? You can start with the following to see how well your blog tour did:
Note: Make sure to outline the goal of your book blog tour so you know which metrics to focus on when measuring success.
- Views and Likes on blog posts.
- Number of comments under the blog posts.
- Website Analytics, ie. did website traffic increase?
- Email list subscriber growth statistics.
- Impressions on Social Media posts
Go Forth And Tour The Blogs!
Now it’s time to get out there and paint the town red! I wish you luck and a ton of success for your book blog tour.
Beyond the blog tour
To truly nail your online presence as an author you need a few more strategies before going on your book blog tour.
You need a great author website to house your author newsletter, books, other works, etc. That way you’ll have a platform to grow your audience from all the new interest you get from the blog tour.
We’re specialists in author website design services so if you’re looking to take that important step towards a stellar online platform fill in this inquiry form.
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