Monday, September 17, 2012

Blog Tours 101 for Authors, Part 3: Why do We Need A PR Agency's Help with a Blog Tour?

Blog Tours 101 for Authors
Part 3: Why do you need a PR agency’s help 
with a blog tour?
by Audra Jennings, 
Litfuse Publicity Group
 
Have you ever watched How I Met Your Mother? One of the main characters, Barney, is always exasperated at all of his friends when he thinks they are out of the loop about something. “Haven’t you read my blog?”

The truth is lots of people have blogs. Anyone can start a blog for free. A lot of people start a blog just to get free stuff. And, unfortunately, a lot of people have blogs their best friends don’t even read. Just like Barney.

This is one of the biggest reasons you should entrust your blog tours to a publicity/public relations agency. There is no limit to the number of blogs that you can find online that review books. One of our most important jobs is reaching out to the bloggers who are the best fit for your book, and screening the ones who aren’t.

Here are some of the benefits of working with an agency on your blog tour:
  • Researching quality blogs with readership and getting contact information takes a lot of time. An agency will have already done that work and is always adding new reviewers to their rotation. 
  • Pitch your book to specialized groups of bloggers, such as Mommy bloggers, homeschool groups, Amish fiction lovers, etc. 
  • Screen new bloggers who request your book after seeing information about the book from other sources.
  • Decline bloggers, for whatever reason (limited number of books, new blogger with only one post on his or her blog, etc.), so that you don’t have to do it. Let us be the bad guy for you.
  • Compile mailing lists so you don’t have to keep up with potentially hundreds of emails coming into your inbox.
  • Schedule posting dates for bloggers.
  • Track review postings and provide links to reviews.
  • Push bloggers that have not posted reviews.
  • Provide content to bloggers (interviews, book trailers, contest information, book summaries, etc.) in an easy-to-use HTML format.
If you are not able to work with an agency to set up your blog tour, some tour groups out there can help you contact bloggers. There are a number of blog tour groups out there, but one piece of advice we would always give—do not join a tour you have to pay to be a part of. There are groups that tour books as a ministry, and the tour coordinators don’t believe in charging to send information about your book. As a rule, paid tour groups usually do not provide anything that free tours don’t, and most of the bloggers overlap.

While tour groups will help you distribute information about your book to potential readers and provide content for the bloggers to post, they don’t provide the services outlined above that an agency will provide.

At Litfuse, we want to free authors to do what they do best: write! Your time is better spent writing while you let us take care of all the details and use our expertise to promote your latest work. 

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For more information about Litfuse Publicity Group, 
visit these links:
www.facebook.com/LitfuseGroup