Guest post: Favorite ways to promote a virtual book tour

Today’s guest blogger is my friend and colleague D’vorah Lansky, who is on a virtual book tour. She’s the author of more than 20 books,  including the Action Guides for Authors series that includes The Busy Author’s Book Marketing Journal: A 30-Day Journal to Help You Track Your Activity and Results. D’vorah is the founder of the Annual Book Marketing Conference Online and the creator of more than 25 successful online programs. Since 2007, D’vorah has taught online book marketing to thousands of authors around the globe. She specializes in helping authors build a business around their books.

Favorite ways to promote a virtual book tour

By D’vorah Lansky

Over the years, and during the course of my previous six virtual book tours, I’ve promoted my virtual book tour in a variety of ways. In this post, I’ll share my five favorite virtual book tour promotion strategies.

Way #1: Get your virtual book tour promoted by your hosts.

Ask your tour hosts to announce your tour dates to their list as well as to their followers on the social networks. Because of their connection with their audience, this will raise the visibility of your virtual book tour.

When you make it a point to develop a relationship with your hosts, they will be more likely to help promote your virtual book tour.

Way #2: Harness the power of mini-posts to boost your rankings in the search engines.

Post mini-posts to your blog each day, and then post a link to that post across the social networks, letting readers know that it’s your virtual book tour celebration. If you use an online service such as Hoot Suite (HootSuite.com) you can post to several social networks with one click.

This accomplishes two things. First, it gets traffic to your blog from the social networks and second it allows you to have outgoing links from your blog to the blogs and podcasts where you’ll be featured during your tour. These outgoing links can raise your visibility in Google.

Way #3: Create a Facebook book or author Page and create interaction with your readers.

Facebook provides a wonderful platform for promoting your book. Creating a Facebook Page for your virtual book tour provides you with an “online billboard” if you will.

Facebook pages get a lot of visibility and when you post interesting content and encourage engagement with the people who “like” your Facebook page, your exposure can grow exponentially.

Way #4: Encourage conversation in the comments section below each blog post.

When you are featured as a guest blogger on other blogs, you’ll have lots of opportunities to interact with new audiences. Once your post has been published on a site, you’ll see that there is a “comments” section below the post. You’ll want to be one of the first to post a comment by thanking your host for featuring you during your virtual book tour.

Encourage your readers to comment by asking them an action-oriented question and inviting them to join in the conversation. You can then circle back and interact with readers by responding to their comments and answering their questions.

Way #5: Register your gravatar so your photo appears in all your comments.

Have you ever noticed in the comments section below blog posts that the photographs of the people posting comments shows up? There is a way to automate this feature and you’ll for sure want to have your photograph appear when you post comments during your virtual book tour.

When you post a comment, you’ll see a form to fill in your name, email address, and website address. Your name will become hyperlinked with your website address and your photograph will appear if you’ve registered that email address at Gravatar.com

What you do is head over to Gravatar.com and register the email address you’ll be listing when you post comments below your posts. Once you register your email address, you’ll want to upload your headshot photo and link it to that email address.

Which of these marketing strategies are your favorite? Do you have a favorite way to market your book or business? Scroll down to the comments section below and join in the conversation.