A virtual book tour is a very cool idea. Instead of traveling from bookstore to bookstore in your area or across the country, you make things "virtual" by visiting different communities on different websites and doing live webinars.
Here are some of the forms a virtual book tour may take:
- Guest posting on people's blogs. These would be blogs that you have researched to have readerships that might be interested in your book.
- Doing interviews with bloggers and then the interview is posted on their blog.
- Doing a live webinar (as mentioned above). This is like doing a seminar on the web where people can see you and hear your voice.
- Doing a free online class, either over a conference call or via a webinar. The idea is that people will be drawn to the free class because of the value that you offer. That also sets you up perfectly to make sales for your product. (It's sort of like when Home Depot does those free classes for home improvement projects, and then you end up buying your supplies from their store!)
- Being interviewed on people's podcasts and videos.
It really depends on the topic of your book, but when doing a book tour you research websites and people that have readerships or audiences that might be interested in your book.
Then, you contact the website owners and ask them if they’d be interested in you doing a guest post or an interview or any of the things mentioned in the bulleted list above.
This brings you and your book to the attention of a ready-made audience who may be interested in your book. Some website owners will go for this because it will be interesting to their readership. Others will see the benefit in having a free unique piece of content added to their site.
How To Market A Book Online: The Conclusion!
There are tons of ways to market books and products online, but it helps not to cast your net too wide, because the more things you have going the less likely it is that you’ll be able to do any of them properly.
It’s better to concentrate on just a few things and do them well. If the info in this series sounds like a lot, take it in baby steps--
1 - Create your book’s website.
2 - Create the content on your blog.
3 - Re-write the content to submit as articles.
Get those parts of your marketing campaign going, and then add in the other steps.
This is online marketing...
Remember, the ultimate goal is to get a higher ranking for your book’s website in Google when people search for phrases (keywords) associated with the topic of your book. It can take several months for your marketing efforts to impact Google, so don't expect an immediate payoff.
If your website is brand new, it can take 6 months or so of consistent marketing before seeing the first fruits of your labors. So, keep in mind that this is a long-term endeavor and consistency is key.
I mentioned the importance of getting your website to rank higher for the keywords associated with your book’s website, and I didn’t tell you anything about keywords or how to figure out which phrases to use or how to use them in your articles submissions. Here is a video that will be helpful to you on that:
How To Do Keyword Research
I hope this series about how to market a book online was helpful! Remember to take it in baby steps--it’s easy to get overwhelmed if you think you need to start everything at once. You can't start marketing your book too early--start 6 months before the book is released or sooner. That gives you a good amount of time to get your online marketing campaign started. Your virtual assistant can help you with a lot of this!
Yes, and once you have this phase done, you will be on your way to creating a "platform" that will make you appealing to media producers. Getting booked on TV can be the next step. Thanks and good luck. Edward Smith.
Posted by: Edward Smith | April 01, 2012 at 11:59 AM