Promotion Strength

When you're promoting your new book online, you must gauge the strength of your promotions in a realistic way. Hoping that readers will notice you is not enough.

I may be repeating myself, but it bears repeating. You must have a good blog of your own on which you post relevant articles 2-3 times a week. You must then make noise about your new blog posts at social sites like Twitter and Facebook so you drive traffic to your blog. Your blog is then a good platform for launching a blog book tour or other online promotion. Check your statistics regularly - anything over 100 hits per day is okay. More is better.

I can hear you grumbling now. Stop that and just do the work.

Next, pick blog hosts for reviews or tour stops that mimic all that I've mentioned above. Even if a blog doesn't have a hit counter that you can see, there are clues to the popularity of the blog. Does the host post 2-3 times a week? How long has the blog been in existence? Is the host getting comments on a regular basis? Do they have Twitter and Facebook links, and when you go there, can you see they are promoting their own posts and driving traffic to the potential review of your book?

Finally, do all the blogs we're talking about have clear links and instructions to a sales point? It's astounding to me how many promotions don't have a buy button or a suggestion to the customer to purchase the title in review.

Next we'll talk about Twitter and Facebook and how to build your viewership at those sites. You need a serious fan club to sell your books, and you can't just sit around waiting for people to discover you. Following and (be)friending in a regular though non-aggressive way is the method you need to develop.

Royalty Statement Realities

Just picked up on Facebook and you'll likely see this post again. The author had the courage to talk real numbers about her NYTimes bestselling books. You can see the royalty statements and get a sense of the timeline in getting paid for book sales. It takes a long time for an author to get paid for sales, especially when there is little or no advance. I fully understand why authors have to write three books a year to make any kind of a living at writing. You'll also see why gauging the results of a blog book tour to actual sales is virtually impossible. Click here to read the article.

Bookmark the Genreality blog - there is lots of good writing information there. Today's post talks about the daily routine of writing.

More Numbers To Consider

One of the most important statistics on your blog book tour are those of your once-and-future blog hosts. You want hosts that get at a bare minimum, 100 or more hits per day. To some of you, this sounds like a paltry number because your own blog may get thousands of visitors each day. But more of you probably don't get anywhere near that many on your own blogs, and building the blog that does seems like an insurmountable challenge. But you must, because this will help you find and choose blogs at least as good as your own.

In the blog book tours classes, we experience great resistance to this concept of finding high-traffic blog hosts. Some people even get downright ornery about the idea, and insist that any blog is good enough, and it's just too much work to vet them for popularity.

Those people should simply pay large sums of money to a tour service to plan an impersonal tour for them. Why? Because it's simply too much work to put into a tour that no one will see if you insist on any old blog. Let's think this out.

You can expect to spend 40-60 hours planning a blog book tour of 10-15 stops. A good portion of that time - up to half - is spent crafting your tour stops and doing the actual writing of the blog posts that your hosts will enter on their blogs. You can figure two hours for each stop, so why would you spend that precious time on a blog that gets 2-3 visitors a day? It makes no sense to gamble that those people will buy your book. Aunt Mabel and many well-meaning friends will offer their services, and by all means humor them if you must. Just don't count them as part of your professional tour of 10-15 really good blog hosts.

Work hard on your blog book tour, but also work smart. That means maximizing the hours you spend preparing a good tour for your very popular hosts.

Next we'll discuss the one most important consideration you must extend to your hosts.

The Numbers Game

It's all about numbers and how to read them - this is how you gauge the success of your book promotions. I'm not talking about your royalty statement and check, which is the final and ultimate success determiner. I'm talking about statistics. Here are a few you need to get to know:

Your blog's hit counter is important, because it measures who is visiting the very foundation of your blog book tour - your blog. There are several free counters you can use. I like Sitemeter, others use Statcounter, and still more swear by Google Analytics. Get into the habit of using your hit counter daily. Read the reports that each offers. Your first goal is to create a blog that gets at least 100 hits per day. Then you're set up to use your blog as a launching pad for your impending blog book tour. A hit counter is how you track your own progress when building your blog.

Also track your amazon rating, from the time the book is listed with them, throughout your tour, and for months after. The numbers are not accurate, but the change is what indicates whether your promotions are effective. For example, if your title rates in the top two million, but moves to a ranking of 57,000 during your blog book tour, clearly the tour is having an impact at least in the world of amazon. com. Try Title Z for an easy way to track your title's ranking.

Next, we'll talk about another statistic - the visitors at your host blogs, and why this is all-important to the success of your tour.

Will a Blog Book Tour Sell Books?

Authors often ask if a blog book tour will sell books. How will they know?

The short answer: you won't. In all fairness, how will you know if your live tour and any other promotion is selling your books? Yes, if you are present at a book signing and fans buy, you'll know about those immediate sales. You could set up the same scenario by buying some books at cost from your publisher, and being the sales point for your blog book tour. Then you'd know.

Still, the tangential sales won't be reflected. Maybe the reader will return to the bookstore after payday. Maybe the blog book tour stops were intriguing enough that a reader adds the title to their amazon.com wishlist. How will you know? Especially since your royalty check won't arrive many months down the road. You likely won't see amazon.com sales reflected for 18 months. So it's almost impossible to relate any of your promotions, online and live, to your cash flow when it finally arrives.

The bottom line: every bit of promotion you do raises your name profile and that's really the goal.

Next we'll talk about other statistics worth tracking to gauge success.

Bolstering Your Enthusiasm

If you need a little help with enthusiasm, whether tackling daily blogging or starting your NaNoWriMo adventure, take some hints from the newest editor at The Blood-Red Penci blog. Here is a list of affirmations that can keep you inspired from day-to-day. You just need to stay optimistic - that's half the battle!

You might also want to check Craig Lancaster's three posts from last week. Craig is on a blog book tour for his new release, 600 Hours of Edward, which was his first NaNoWriMo attempt in last year's contest. It's quite a story.

National Novel Writing Month and More

The first month of our blog book tours class is always a blog-a-day challenge, and when your blogging starts to flag, a contest is often the way to get the juices flowing again. It doesn't have to be anything formal. I challenge you to blog daily during the month of November!

This month is also National Novel Writing Month, and so it's a good time to make a daily blogging commitment to prime the pump for your daily NaNo writing. Why not join me in a quick morning blog post before you start on that new novel? It's amazing how quickly a good habit is rejuvenated.

For those of you who want a little more support, we have a nice group of blog book tour alums gathering over at the BBT Cafe. Join us over there for discussions, brainstorming, promotion, or any of a number of group projects. You don't have to be a seasoned blog book tour vet to benefit from the camaraderie.

The Easiest Blog Improvement Tip Ever

Collapse your archive. It's as simple as that.

Blog Power

Literary agent, Nathan Bransford, asks his blog readers where they heard about the book they are currently reading. Read the comments if you want to know the power of blogging! Click here to leave your own comment.

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Blog book tours vs. live book tours

Both are good. But don't plan on scheduling a blog book tour the same time you are traveling for a live tour. Complete one tour, rest up for a week or so, and then embark on your second tour.

Authors who think they can do a good job scheduling live and virtual tours at the same time, have no clue how much work is involved with a blog book tour. No clue at all. One of the tours won't get the attention it needs to succeed, probably the blog tour, and then the author will complain that the silly idea didn't work for them at all. Gee, I wonder why...

One tour at a time and give each of them 100% of your energy. Easy peasy if you pay attention and follow directions.

At the Blog Book Tours class, the next assignments for the month focus on the social marketing groups we all know... and maybe hate. These include Facebook, MySpace, Goodreads, and Twitter.

We're starting with Twitter because it's the fastest, easiest, and most powerful for marketing your other websites. It's also less of a time-suck than the more complex social forums. There are other added benefits about Twitter networking that I'll point out later.

In a nutshell, Twitter is a micro-blogging site that allows snappy posts of 140 characters. To participate, you follow other Twitter users and this allows you to see their updates.

You, in turn, are followed by others and those people can read what you have to say. Keep this scenario in mind, because it's the key to how Twitter works, or how it doesn't if you don't "get it". Believe me, many people don't, and consequently feel it's a waste of time.

Let me repeat:

You must follow people to see their updates.
Only your followers can see your updates.

It's crucial you understand this. If you are enthusiastically following thousands of people, but only a fraction are following you back, then only that small fraction sees what you write. Therefore, it's important you spend your efforts offering information that is of value to others, so they will want to follow and read you.

Now, to get started, and before the following and socializing begins, you need a few things upfront:

1. An email account that is acceptable on Twitter like yahoo or hotmail


2. A name that coordinates with your other website efforts if possible - I use blogbooktours everywhere I can
   
3. A small photo for your homepage and post icon


4. A well-written short bio


5. The website link you will send readers to for more information
   

Now you're ready to set up your Twitter account. Go to http://twitter.com/ and follow the directions, plugging in the information above.

Once you've gotten this far, you're ready to practice entering some updates. Introduce yourself in one, leave a blog link in another, tell us what you're doing today in a third. Do this several times more, perhaps throughout the day, to get Twitter into your conciousness and just to practice writing concise but meaningful messages. Be sure to bookmark your Twitter page to make it one of your regular stops several times during the day, much like checking your email.

Now you're ready to start following people and have them follow you back. We'll talk about how to do that in the next post.

And then you can follow me @twitter!

Tomorrow I'll also post helpful links picked up at Twitter to help you even more. One of my favorites is TwiTip for ongoing updates and tips.

Making room for better things

There are better things to put on your blog than a long archive list. Why show each post in the current month? Your readers can scroll through your actual posts quite easily. Collapse that thing now!

Then add the new Follow Me widget on Blogger or something similar on other blogging platforms. This is a great way to spark blog popularity. Place it quite high in your sidebar as demonstrated right here. Your widget will look something like this:

Everyone in the B.A.D. Challenge, as you visit each other, look for a way to follow and add yourself to this list. On Blogger blogs, you'll see that all the blogs you follow now appear at the bottom of your dashboards. It's a fast and handy way to see if anyone has posted something new. How many of you knew that?

And they're off

In the right column, you'll see some of our current class members - these folks are courageous enough to participate in the Blog-A-Day Challenge otherwise known as the B.A.D. Challenge. There will be days toward the end of the month when that acronym will have truth seeping from its pores.

Blogging daily is hard work, and maybe not even a good idea over the long haul. But to get a blog pumped up fast, it's a good tactic to post day after day, to have pals visiting your blog and commenting, and to politely and appropriately promote on your other social networks like Twitter and FaceBook.

Two tricks can really help an aspiring blogger succeed:

1. Plan your blogs so that one long and related post is split over several days. This maximizes your writing efforts and is appreciated by readers who want to stop by your blog for a quick look, but don't want to wade through a long treatise

2. Write the above-mentioned essay(s), and then use the prescheduling feature on your blog to post ahead for the week

To demonstrate, look at my post above, and notice how this essay could easily have been split into two blog posts. Because I write my blogs in a Word file ahead of time, it's easy for me to see these natural breaks.

Extra tip: If you're drafting in a formatted word processing program, copy and paste into the Edit Html window (in Blogger) rather than the Compose window. You'll avoid formatting issues when your blog publishes.

Do you draft your blog posts in a word processing program and then move them to your blog? What are some other reasons this might be a good idea?

Time for another class

We've been quiet here as our last blog book tours class put together their tours. We've been following them as they travel to host blogs for most of April, and we'll interview a few of them to get feedback about their experiences through the entire process.

Tomorrow starts our new class and we'll be trying out a few new tactics. This course will last only two months, and we'll be following a few authors from the last class as they launch their tours in May. We'll get to experience this whole process from beginning to end, and that gives us much to learn.

We can squeeze a few more authors in who have book releases in the next few months. Join the Blog Book Tours class today and be sure to give us your name and book title. It's starts in crazy earnestness tomorrow with a Blog-A-Day Challenge.

Yes, it's still free. Yes, we're still relentless drill sergeants. Hup-2-3-4. Where's today's blog post, corporal?

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