Lessons from A Virtual Blog Tour

While Nicole Dean was gallivanting around the Net as part of her Blog World Tour - I was busy planning a tour for one of my clients to promote the Self-Employment Telesummit.   I didn't have Nichole's new virtual blog tour guide to help me out (but I'm going to grab a copy so I'm ready for next year (or to put on tours for my other clients) - but I did learn a few things with my summer blog tour organizing adventure.

1. Virtual Blog Tours are wins for everyone involved.  Many of the blogs who volunteered to have Molly post were newer blogs - they got extra traffic from our promotion -Molly got extra exposure to new audiences.

2. The blog tour ended up being a good way for hosts to make some affiliate sales.  We encouraged our virtual tour participants to sign up as affiliates — we drove traffic to the posts - and people clicks on the links.  A win-win for everyone.

3. The tour ended up being a great way for me to introduce my virtual assistance clients to each other.  Three of the blog tour participants were clients of mine that served complimentary markets but who would not have otherwise been reached by Molly's campaign.  I love it when I can help my clients join forces.

4. You need to nag and keep your client on schedule.  Toward the end — I felt like a slave mistress and all the blog posts were coming out on top of each other — it didn't give us time to really promote them.

5. Give your hosts clear instructions as to days to post - how to insert an affiliate link, what to tweet and when, etc.  I think many of the hosts could have done even better traffic and affiliate-wise if we had taken them by the hand a little more.

Still, everyone involved had a good time and Molly got some great promotion.  I definitely plan to pick up Nicole's virtual tour e-book and learn what I can do better next time.