A Technique For Finding Blog Hosts

I asked the class to do a little exercise over the weekend - make a list of keywords for your novel, then using as many of those words as you can cram in, write a three-sentence synopsis of your book. Here's what Nancy submitted:

While traveling home, Missie is thrust through a portal where her music plays an important role in defeating a tyrant. Her career must be sacrificed, her life forever changed, to accommodate these Renaissance costumed people of Gil-Lael. Their values are so different from Missie's modern American lifestyle, that she believes she has truly entered a fantasy world.


My list:

music
career
sacrifices
values
costumes
Renaissance festivals
life changes
fantasy
travel

Nancy has nailed her keywords and a description that's clear enough for us to understand the gist of her book. (Polished, this could live on her blog, too.)

Just for yucks, I googled "Renaissance Festival blogs" and the first hit gave me a musical group that ties into that particular book theme:

http://www.cantigamusic.com/blog.html

This blog seems to be relatively active. And she's doing some traveling so that's another keyword connection along with music!

The next step for Nancy is to start a separate blogroll on her blog - either for music or for the festivals that relate to her theme, or both. (She could link to many Ren Fests throughout the country.) Add this blog right into a related blogroll immediately. Then it won't be forgotten or lost forever. Nancy will see the name on her blog, hop over there, and start interacting with this blogger by leaving a comment now and then, or at least staying in tune with what they are doing. (Don't just dump your book info on them though - that's just too tacky.) Always check to make sure a potential host blogger has Twitter and Facebook information and try to connect on those levels, too.
Nancy might also check costume blogs and travel blogs for countries pertinent to her theme. Even if a blog doesn't look particularly good or active, look at their blogroll, because that's where the good hosts often lie... even another layer or two down can yield some real blog gems. One related blog leads to another.

Yes, it's time-consuming, but well worth the effort. You do this a little each day, until you have dozens upon dozens of potential blog book tour hosts in your clickable blogrolls. By the time you're ready to plan your tour, you'll have choices and, even better, relationships established with other bloggers. And that means success for your blog book tour.

The Blogroll

What is that? It's a group of links in the right or left columns of your blog, with links to other blogs. Why would you want one? Well, for several reasons. It makes your blog more noticeable to search engines for one thing.

You can use your blogrolls to connect to blogs that offer your readers added content that might interest them. My links would probably embellish on the theme of blog book tours. I also have a blogroll for members of the current blog challenge, and use these links list to visit the blogs. This is part of what we call "cyber-schmoozing" and it's a good thing to do in preparation for your own blog book tour down the road.

Finally, it's a good idea to have a separate blogroll of your favorite blogs that you think might make good hosts for your future tour. Scoping out those blogs takes a lot of time, so it's best to do a little work each day. It's so much easier to look at your own list of favorite blogs, and then invite those friends to host you, than to be left scrambling just weeks before your blog book tour is scheduled to begin.

Here's a starting point for you thanks to My Friend Amy's Blog - a list of book review blogs, lots of them. Click on the button at right, and then explore a few of them every day. Add your favorites to a blogroll on your site. It won't take any time to accumulate a list of fabulous blogs to host you. We'll also cover other techniques for finding great and unusual blogs at a later time.

How do you go about finding blog hosts for a tour? Leave us a comment.

Housekeeping

It's amazing how clutter builds up everywhere, and that includes on your blogs. Have you looked at your blog sidebars lately? Does any of that make sense to your readers? Two of my blogrolls right here are a mess. They don't make a bit of sense. I need to clean that up this week.

What about your blogrolls? Why do they exist? If you're planning a blog book tour, we suggest you have one blogroll for just your possible hosts. These are sites you've reviewed for potential, visit regularly, and post comments on so they get to know you. They're your social blogs, the getting-to-know-you pals who might give your book a boost down the road.

Do you do housekeeping in your virtual world on a regular basis? How often? It might not be a bad idea to consciously and objectively review your sites on a regular basis. Weekly wouldn't be too often with some of my e-Cleaning needs.