What Is a Virtual Blog Tour?
A virtual blog tour is similar to a traditional speaking or book tour in that the guest speaker or author makes several appearances in an attempt to promote a message and/or sell their book. On a traditional tour contact would be made with suitable locations to spend a few hours talking about a message or a book and in selling products to visitors. The main difference between a traditional tour and a virtual tour being, virtual tours are accomplished 100 percent over the Internet and incur no travel or travel related expense. Obviously that provides a huge potential savings to the guest speaker or author. The other advantage is in a virtual tour’s longevity. Once a guest leaves a physical location their presence is no longer felt. With a virtual tour the guest’s appearance creates a permanent Link on the Internet which continues to be accessible indefinitely through key word searches. This provides years of continued publicity for the guest.
The Benefits of a Virtual Tour for the Guest Include . . .
- the privacy of a virtual tour. There is no face-to-face contact
- the advantage of time to ponder the appropriate response to give a comment or question
- the option of making numerous tour stops each day instead of just one or two
- visibility, positive exposure
- PRICE, a virtual book tour is ―virtually free. Unless you‘re hiring a tour company to put your tour together for you, there is little or no expense
- content, in the form of either a book review, informational article, Q&A written, video or podcast interviews
- cross-links to the guest’s Web site and to other tour stops
- an opportunity to purchase product either directly or via a sales-link
- exposure to new information, product, experts and ideas
For a host, virtual blog tours are an effective way to build a blog audience or enhance the blog content being offered. Managing a blog can be a fulltime job. Hosting a blog tour allows host bloggers to provide fresh content, a book review, Q&A written author interviews, and content rich articles by featured guests, with minimal effort to themselves. Other hosting options might include video or podcast interviews.
Virtual Blog Tour Hosts in this Network Benefit from the Partnership Through . . .
- quality, content rich, fresh blog material that will grab visitor’s attention
- perma-links, back-links, comments, and increased site traffic
- positive networking relationships among tour hosts and a reciprocal relationships for future tours and promotional endeavors
- assisted coordination of cross promotion efforts among tour hosts
- cross-linked tour schedule Word doc and HTML txt to make posting and promotion easier
- prepared tour tweets to assist with social networking promotional blasts on Twitter
- Increased and positive exposure
- potential elevation in search engine ranking and placement
Tips: How to Get the Most Out of Being a Host
