My Interview with Blogger Thomas Nixon
Yesterday I traveled to Fresno, California, for the first stop of my 10-Day, 10-Stop Virtual Book Tour Challenge. I was interviewed by author and blogger Thomas Nixon of Small Press Blog where Tom shares some great tools and resources on independent and self-publishing.
Tom and I chatted about how I came to write, My Virtual Book Tour Secrets! and why an author should consider organizing a virtual book tour for their own book. We also talked about some of the different types of content authors can provide to hosting blogs, the pre-tour setup needed before embarking on a virtual book tour of your own, and even why I choose to release the book as an e-book instead of a print book. Please join us.
Tomorrow I’m heading up to Seattle, Washington, to visit with Dorothy Lemoult, I hope you can join us!
Day 5: Setting Up a Virtual Book Tour in 5-Days Challenge
I finally made it to Day-5! I thought today would never get here …
Did I succeed in setting up my 10-Day, 10-Stop Virtual Book Tour? I don’t know yet. It’s still early in the day and I’ve got several more bloggers to contact. Check here for itinerary updates.
In this video I review the previous 8 steps in setting up a virtual book tour and then I show you the email I use to contact bloggers asking if they’d be interested in participating in my virtual book tour. I explain each section of the email and why it’s included. You don’t want to skip a paragraph. I encourage you to copy my email formula, not my words. Put your personality into your email, you’ll be more successful.
Good luck in setting up your own virtual book tour.
If you have any questions don’t hesitate to contact me. I’ll be glad to help you in any way that I can.
Until next time …
No day without a line.
Day 4: Setting Up a Virtual Book Tour in 5-Days Challenge
Welcome to Day 4! We’re over the hump … but we still have a lot to cover before the Challenge is over, so get your pen and paper out. Ready?
Today’s lesson is Step 8: Determining a Blogs BR. In this first video I explain my Blog Rank (BR) Formula and how it works. When you’re ready click play …
In this video I demonstrate the BR Formula in action and show you how to evaluate the blogs that we’ve been receiving in our Google Alerts emails. Once you get the hang of it you should be able to evaluate and categorize 10 blogs in about 30 minutes.
Whenever you’re ready, click play …
Tomorrow in Step 9, we finally start contacting blog owners! I’ll show you the email I send them that gets around an 83% positive response rate. After you get good at determining a blog’s BR, you may even get a higher response.
That’s all for today. I’ll see you tomorrow.
Until next time …
No day without a line.
Day 3: Setting Up a Virtual Book Tour in 5-Days Challenge
Welcome to Day 3!
Today marks the half-way point in this challenge; there’s still a little work to do before we actually contact blog owners to ask if they’d be interested in hosting a stop on our virtual book tour. Let’s get started …
Today’s lesson is Step 7: Creating Your Media Kit. The earlier you get this step done the better. This is where we’ll direct the blog owners we contact to for additional information.
Your Media Kit should contain these 8 items:
1.) Your Authors Bio
2.) Your Photo
3.) Cover images
4.) Reviews of your book
5.) Testimonials
6.) Press Release
7.) Sample Chapter/Excerpt
8.) Contact Information
You can include your Media Kit as a page on your blog, that’s what I did. Or, you can make a static web page on your web site. It doesn’t matter.
In today’s video I reveal several ideas for each item in your media kit. Got your pen and paper handy? Good, let’s get started with today’s video …
NOTE: Don’t forget to go to Google Alerts and set up the other 3 Alerts that I mention in the video.
That’s all for today.
Until next time …
No day without a line.
Day 2: Setting Up a Virtual Book Tour in 5-Days Challenge
Welcome to Day 2!
I’m going to cover a lot of information today. But first, I’d like to give you an idea of where we’ve been and where we’re going …
Today I’m moving from the planning stages - Steps 1, 2 and 3 - that I discussed yesterday, into the data gathering stage. I’ll spend today and tomorrow morning on data gathering - covered in Steps 4, 5 and 6. Tomorrow afternoon - in Step 8 - I’ll introduce you to my secret technique for evaluating a blog to determine if it would be a good stop for your virtual book tour.
In the videos that follow you’ll see that after you put Steps 4, 5 and 6 into place, the data we’ll be evaluating will be delivered right to our email inbox. It doesn’t get any easier than that.
This first video covers Step 4: Listing Your Book’s Keywords and Phrases. We’re going see how to use this list in Step 5 to locate blogs that our potential readers visit or blogs that are already discussing the topic of our books.
Get out your pen and paper for notes. Here we go …
That was easy, wasn’t it?
Now let’s see how to use our list of 20 keywords and phrases.
That’s it for today.
Oh, what about Step 7? I’ll cover that tomorrow morning … it’s what you should have in your media kit.
Until then …
No day without a line.
Improved Blog Focus … Helping You to Earn a Living from Your Writing
This morning I was over at skelliewag.org and I came across the post How to Get 1,050 Subscribers in 3 Months. “Wow,” I thought to myself, “1050 subscribers.” “I’d love to have 1050 subscribers!” was my next thought. Anyway, after reading through her post I was convinced to make a few tweeks to this blog.
First, identify your target audience.
Once you work out who you’re writing for you can cut out the topics that aren’t relevant to them. When a visitor feels your articles are consistently tailored to their needs they’ll be much more likely to subscribe.
Another key strategy is to make your target audience obvious. She does it in her header. Innovation. Ideas. Simplicity. For Bloggers, Webmasters and WebWorkers. I’m changing mine. It use to be Personal Development for Writers. After much thought, I’ve changed it to read, Creativity. Productivity. Profitability. Helping You to Earn a Living from Your Writing. I think that better states what I’m trying to accomplish with this blog. The next time you’re reading a blog post see if you can find out who their target audience is.
Third, provide valuable content. Quality is better than quantity. With that said, and keeping my readers in mind, I will ask myself “Is this the most valuable information that I can give to my target audience right now?” If the answer is “No.” I will not post it. To “steal” another idea from Skelliewag, “Don’t write about topics, Write for people.”
I hope this change in attitude and focus on my part will make you a more creative, productive and profitable writer. And, if you’re so inclined, subscribe to my blog.
Until next time…
Keep Writing!
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