How do you know if a blog tour is right for your agency to promote a book, product or service?  The Blog Tour Spot (www.blogtourspot.com) provides some helpful questions to consider before deciding whether it’s worth your time and effort:

1. What is your goal(s) for the blog tour?
What do you hope to accomplish by doing a blog tour? Think about this in both general and specific terms. Remember that your goals should be specific enough that you can define what achieving them looks like, whether through your gut feeling or with hard statistics. So far, our studies have shown blog tours to be ineffective at selling books in a measurable way. They seem to be effective at initiating relationships and building upon networks, which may eventually translate into sales, but don’t expect a blog tour to give an immediate boost to the sale of your book or product.

2. How does this fit into your overall marketing plan?
A blog tour should not make up your entire marketing plan; it’s only one small piece. Your blog tour should support your overall marketing goals and supplement the other activities you will conduct. Consider ways to leverage other pieces of your marketing plan to boost your blog tour and vice versa. For example, if you will be conducting a radio interview, consider mentioning your blog tour during the spot. Be sure to include the dates and times of your radio interviews within the blog tour information as well.

3. Why are you considering a blog tour?
This seems like an obvious question, but you really need to think through the answer. While a blog tour is cost effective because of limited overhead, it still requires dedicated time on your part. Designing and organizing the tour is definitely an investment of time if you want to do it well. Even if you hire someone to organize it for you, you still must be available for interviews, guest posting and making comments.

4. What are your expectations about the tour, how it’s run, how it’s designed?
Take a look at how other blog tours have run and decide what you like and dislike about their design. Think about your goals and consider the type of design that will best support them.  After thinking through these four questions, you should be in a better place to discern whether or not a blog tour should be a part of your marketing plan.

Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to small- and medium-sized advertising agencies and businesses.