This is part of one of a two part guest post from Julie Bonn Heath. Julie Bonn Heath is a PR/Marketing Professional, Author and National Freelance Writer. She lives on the beautiful Oregon Coast. See her blog, Marketing Jewels, at www.jbhmarketing.blogspot.com. More about Julie at www.juliebonnheath.com
Blog Tours and Virtual Blog Tours are a great way to get the word out on the Internet about a new product. A blog tour involves multiple mentions of a product on many blogs within a certain time period. This can include reviews of the product, interviews with the product creator and more. A virtual blog tour also includes virtual components, such as podcasts, chats or webinars.
An online tour has many benefits. Most importantly, it gives the search engines multiple results for the product, which increases the ability for someone to find information through a Web search. The more results, the more trust the searcher has in that product. If reviews are part of the tour, a potential consumer has plenty of opportunity to read varied opinions on the product before purchasing it. As we know, peer reviews are a valid method for sales.
Blog mentions and reviews also increase the opportunity for press coverage.
Organizing a blog tour can be a challenge because the “stops” should vary for each product. You should be as targeted as possible when reaching out to bloggers. When I plan a tour for a client, a more expensive package might include all niche sites for that particular product, if possible. I will work with small businesses on a budget to create packages that may have fewer “stops,” but will still help them get results.
Usually, I limit the sites on a tour that only provide reviews. These blogs should not be avoided entirely because review sites often have a loyal following and good traffic. In addition, the wide world of mommy bloggers should always be considered if your product is a good fit. These gals are highly influential.
In the next post, I’ll tell you about how to manage a blog tour…
Comments
4 responses to “Guest Post: Organizing & Managing a Blog Tour, Part One”
Interesting a blog tour?? Never heard of it…
Jenni – Austrlaia
Hey Kelli it’s great finding your blog and one thing i’d suggest is a prominent search field, unless I missed it. I stumbled upon one of your media monitoring posts and was hoping to just easily search for the rest of your media monitoring related posts!
Thanks, Daniel. I just recently changed my layout and didn’t realize that the search box was gone. All fixed! Glad you found me. 🙂
Thanks for commenting. If you have questions for me, please feel free to post.