If you already have self published books, chances are you’re looking for effective online marketing book strategies to help sell your book. You’ve spent hours brainstorming, writing, editing and publishing your book. Now what? Now it’s time to let people know that your book exists. Even if you have a great book, it doesn’t matter if no one knows about it.
So, how can you gain more fans and sell more books through online marketing book strategies?
Consider a “Virtual Book Tour” (Guest Blogging)
What is a “Virtual Book Tour” anyway? Basically it is a blog tour where you share guest posts on different blogs to promote you, your blog, your products and your books.
The Top 3 Reasons Why Should You Consider Guest Blogging
1) It’s free. Who doesn’t want free book marketing, right? However, you do have to spend your time researching and writing the posts, but you don’t have to pay for the advertising you will get from these posts.
2) It’s forever. Your guest post will remain on that blog forever to promote you, your products and your books.
3) It’s fun. Not only do you get tons of increased blog traffic, exposure, new fans and new customers but you also meet some amazing people in your field of expertise. I have found it fun to network and get to know the other key players in my niche. I have even done many self publishing interviews with them on my site as well.
Tips to an Effective Guest Blogging Tour
If you are going to invest the time into scheduling a guest blogging tour and writing the posts, you’ll want to make the most out of this online marketing book idea.
Here are three tips:
1) Do your research. Your tour will be much more effective if you choose high traffic, popular blogs. You know that a blog is popular by finding out their Google page rank and Alexa ranking. In the beginning, you may still want to target a few smaller blogs, but don’t be afraid to approach the authority blogs in your niche!
2) Provide high quality content. Be a great guest and provide unique, high quality content for your host. Don’t use PLR or an article you posted to a directory. Make yourself stand out by putting your best foot forward.
3) Develop a plan. You will need to plan how long your tour will be and develop a schedule for your tour. If you are doing a longer tour, you will need tools to help you stay organized. Use what works best for you whether it’s an Excel spreadsheet, a Word document or pen and paper.
To get started right away at planning your “Virtual Book Tour” to gain more exposure and more fans, download a free 20-page report from Shelley Hitz, of Self-Publishing-Coach.com called, “Guest Blogging Success.” You won’t want to miss out on this online marketing book idea that is growing every day in popularity. Download your free copy now: http://blogtour.self-publishing-coach.com/guest-blogging-success
Shelley Hitz is an entrepreneur, speaker, author and consultant to individuals, organizations and small businesses who want to multiply their impact through self publishing.
And she teaches from personal experience. Over a two year span, while working full-time, she self published five books, multiple audio CDs, authored two websites that attract thousands of visitors each month, and created multiple products that she sells through her website and at her speaking engagements.
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Tags: guest blogging, guest blogging tour, virtual book tour
Use Articles to Dominate Your Niche!
On the subject of guest posting, you’re preaching to the choir: I’ve been a big proponent of it for a while now, even for bloggers/people not necessarily selling books…
Hi Sonny
This is a great way to build your reputation and traffic if you do it consistently and well. Shelley is coming from the angle of coaching authors which is why she wrote the article that way, but it does apply to any blogger as you’ve suggested.
I need to start doing this more (I’ve only done it twice — not enough 8=)
I haven’t tried guest blogging but I have tried making a lot of post to hubpages. Although I heard so many things about guest blogging, I didn’t have enough confidence to blog. Maybe in the near future, I will try to guest blog so that I could also reap the benefits.
Hi Mildred
HubPages is a great place to write (try Squidoo as well). I haven’t used them as much as I should but they are great.
The thing about guest posting though, is that many blogs have a regular audience that subscribes through email or RSS to see what is coming next. If you can provide a valuable article for that audience it can bring you new readers. It also gives you authority since the owner of the blog liked your article enough to include it.
I see that you blog in the lottery niche, so you need to find other bloggers in that niche and submit proposals to them. I’d also recommend that you personalize your blog a bit — let people get to know you. Your posts are all by “admin” but you can change the name that is displayed — see how mine are all “LoneWolf”? That way, when people come to check out your site you’ve got a name and face to go with it.
Would it be ok to make a copy of this post on my new site? I will, of course, give you all the kudos and, more importantly, a link back to your site.
The site goes live July 2nd, but it can be seen at http://www.writers-site.com
Thanks
Hi Joe
This article is copyrighted by Shelley who allows it to be used by affiliates promoting her books. If you want to know more about this shoot me an email. Or check out the landing page that I’ve linked to above and look for the “affiliates” link. It looks like her stuff would be an excellent fit for your new site.
Thanks, it sounds perfect for the site.
Just to shpw how my mind works, as soon as I read this post, the idea sprang up that it would be great to have a free service where blogs and writers can join and create a guest blogging network.
Thanks for the tips. Do you have a list of sites that accepts guest blogs for any topic? I have a campaign that needs some good sites.
Hi Reika,
We will soon be looking for guest bloggers, and we are also workign on a guest blogging network, so you can add yourself as available and also look for those with openings for guest bloggers.
I won’t spam the URL here, but please contact me if you want further info – joe@joe-jenkins.com
Thanks for the thought Joe. I would definitely take time to contact you 🙂
Get in touch any time. What I didn’t say above, is that it’s a free site 🙂
Hi Reika
The last stat that I heard was that there are currently 70,000,000+ blogs on the internet. So there is certainly lots of opportunities out there.
Shelley’s free report is a great place to start: http://lonewolfmuskoka.ca/reco.....20Blogging
Thank you so much! I really appreciate the help 🙂
You’re welcome Reika.
Virtual book tour or guest blogging is really very helpful in promoting business and site.
thank you for the effort you make to help us make the most of our blogs.
I really like this post
Thank you so much!I agree 100% Your guest post will remain on that blog forever to promote you, your products and your books.
Virtual book tour or guest blogging is really very helpful in promoting business and site!
You have great ideas. The virtual blog tour could and will be help very much to public.
Great Post! I’ll be sending this around to my author friends. You’ve really pinned the etiquette of guest blogging and I get tired of explaining (lol)
I’m glad that you guys and gals like this article! Shelley is an awesome writer and I’m glad that I could feature her post here.
I have been pursuing some guest posting of my own and have 2 articles coming up as guest posts on some pretty big name blogs in the near future. I’m pretty pumped about that and I’ll have to get writing more!
Grate tips! I have an e-commerce and a Blog. The idea of a virtual tour can help me to increase the number of visitors of my website.
Thanks.
I’ve been working on an ebook for Kindle and am thinking this might be a great strategy for marketing that as well!
I have tried to do this to get more visitors to my site, Most bloggers were not interested but i did find some that were happy to help me and it really did help immediately i found my traffic increasing.
do you recommend send an email to the blog author with my post or just send my guest post to those blogs with the send a link/ write for … links on them?
Hi Arturo
If you see a blog that has a set of guidelines for guest posts then follow them as best as you can.
However, if the blog doesn’t have a set of guidelines but you think that you have something useful for them, then head to their contact page or about page to get their contact info.
You’ll have to introduce yourself and the article you’re submitting in a way that captures their attention (especially if it’s a popular blog).
I’ve heard advice that says don’t include the article in your first email and others that say do include it. I’d lean towards including it. If you capture their attention then the article is there for them to read. It takes them less time than it would with an email exchange.
I would do this but I’m not an expert at anything 🙁
Hi Mell
You don’t need to be an expert (or an author of a book) to use guest posting. All you need is some well researched content that is written in an engaging style. Based on the blog you’ve started, shopping may be something you could write about.
You’ll want to have more stuff happening at your blog first though — a guest post can bring lots of traffic back to your blog and you want to have something to keep them coming back.
Hey, I never thought about virtual book tours! I’ve been into guest posting for ages, but virtual tours is something new to me. I’ll go check it out!
We stumbled over here coming from a different page and thought I should check things out.
I like what I see so i am just following you. Look forward to finding out about your web page yet again.
The problem with guest blogging on a regular basis is that it’s extremely time-consuming, the best blogs don’t accept guest posts and that it’s not even safe when it comes to SEO (Matt Cutts recently said that he doesn’t recommend guest enchanced guest blogging).
Guest blogging isn’t any more time consuming that writing your own blog posts. At least it shouldn’t be. There is obviously a time lag with the publication since you can’t just hit “Publish” and go. But I would hope that you put the same time and effort into your own blog as you do for guest posts.
As for SEO, the thing that Matt is talking about there is not true guest posting. He is talking about sites that allow people to sign up and post whatever they want and call it guest posting.
I’m glad you pointed out that there is a difference between legitimate guest posts on an established site and “guest post” farms (for want of a better description).