Creating Your Own Blog Tour - Step Five - Facebook Party

Happy Tuesday! Yeah, okay, yesterday was Monday, and there are still three days left in the week, but this is the last post in my series, so that's a great reason to smile! Today, I'm going over how to throw a Facebook party that rocks, why you should do one, and how to set one up. Ready? Grab those pens and notebooks and let's get going!

In this series:
How to Sign up Bloggers
Creating Promotional Materials and HTML
Finding Reviewers
Creating a Thunderclap Campaign
Throwing a Facebook Launch Party

Why should you throw a Facebook Launch party along with your blog tour?

• It gets people engaged with your content (in this case, your book).
• You can help drive traffic to the blogs that hosted you (what's in it for them).
• Interaction with fans and potential fans.
• Getting other authors involved and expanding your circle.
• Creating a ripple effect across Facebook so more people see your stuff.

There are a few things to remember when setting up your Facebook party:

• When asking other authors to join, be sure they write in your genre.
• Book swag is great, books are great, but not everyone wants book swag or books.
• Have a schedule, and be sure and post the link to your party on your blog post for the tour (might even want to send it to the other bloggers).
• Don't just invite anyone and everyone on your friends list. Be specific.
• Be sure and share the event where you shared the ARC invite or where you hang out.

Now that you have a grasp of the rules, let's talk about how to run a Facebook party.

Usually, these things are filled with games like:

• Caption This - You (or one of the authors helping) post a funny picture and ask attendees to give it a caption.
• Scavenger Hunt - Have attendees find information online and post their results.
• Your Facebook Profile Picture to My Book Cover - Everyone who changes their profile picture to your book cover is entered to win something.
• Say Thanks - People go to Facebook pages or blog posts and thank the host for their time or donation.
• Meme Me - Everyone shares their favorite meme.

There are so many possibilities! Have the authors helping you come up with some other ones.

Here's how a Facebook Party usually goes:
Set up an event on Facebook (I'll go into that here in a moment) with a time and date.
Create a graphic (instructions can be found on this post) 851x315 pixels in size for the event image.
Create a list with time slots for authors who may want to help out (don't forget yourself).
Make a poll with the question: Who invited you? And decide on a giveaway (this should be something awesome).
Start your invitations.
Fill your list with authors.
Be sure all runs smoothly day of the event (you really need to be there, keeping an eye on things).
Don't worry, folks understand how it works.

Now, how do you set up an event on Facebook? Let's get into it!

Go to your Facebook home page and click here:

Click Create:

In the dropdown, choose Create Public Event:

Fill out the form and click Create:

You'll have something that looks like this:

Let's upload that header you created! Click here:

Choose Upload Image and get 'er done. You shouldn't be able to drag it at all if you created it at the correct dimensions above, so click Save Changes:

Now, click Ask Question:

Type in your poll question:

Click Add Poll Options:

Be sure "anyone can add options" has a check mark by it:

Add yourself as one of the options:

Click post:

Click on the little arrow on the top right corner:

Select Pin Post:

This will keep the poll question at the top of the event, no matter how many other posts are made. It's labeled Pinned Post:

Remember, if you pin another post, it'll replace the poll! Click on Invite:

Share the event, and then invite your friends!

That's really all there is to it. I hope this series of posts helped you in some way.

Have you ever hosted a Facebook party? What games did you play?

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo

Creating Your Own Blog Tour - Step Four - Thunderclap

Happy Monday, good people of the blogosphere! Today, it's all about Thunderclap campaigns. I know you've all seen them, but do you know what they're for or what they can do for your blog tour? I intend to show you, so grab those pens and notebooks and let's get going!

In this series:
How to Sign up Bloggers
Creating Promotional Materials and HTML
Finding Reviewers
Creating a Thunderclap Campaign
Throwing a Facebook Launch Party

Thunderclap. What is it?

Well, a Thunderclap campaign is you, asking for people to auto-share your content the day you want it to be blasted to the world. It's usually one or two lines that'll go on people's Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, and/or Tumblr blogs. Basically, it's a boom of content on day one of your tour.

You'll want to create this as soon as your bloggers sign up, so you can spend the time getting people to support your campaign. You have a max of 60 days to get your campaign supported and can choose either 100, 250, or 500. This number is important! If you don't meet it, your campaign won't go. But you can exceed whichever number you choose.

It's a great idea to have a master post with all the blog tour stops (and a short line of the content they'll have) listed at the bottom of your own tour post (you did remember that your blog should be counted as one of the many, right?).

That's the link you want to point your Thunderclap campaign to so everyone who makes it to that post can see the others.

But why a Thunderclap campaign?

Because your social media reach grows exponentially. Let's look at some numbers, shall we?
Without Thunderclap:

• 20 bloggers signed up to help with your tour and all of them post on time.
• Each of those bloggers has 250 e-mail followers (5k people).
• 50 of those followers on each blog are the same people (-1k).
• 100 of those followers on each blog don't read the content/posts (-2k).
• Out of the 2k left, we'll say 1k are readers of your genre.
• Those 20 bloggers may post to Facebook and Twitter, and probably have many of the same followers on those platforms, so we'll leave that number off for now to be reserved in our accounting.

Not a bad number, but you can do better.

With Thunderclap:

• 100 people sign up to tweet.
• Each of those accounts have 2k followers (200k people).
• 50 people sign up to post on Facebook.
• Each of those accounts have 200 friends (10k people).
• 20 people sign up to post to Tumblr.
• Each of those accounts have 200 followers (4k people).
• Out of 214k people, there are probably 10k that are unique and readers of your genre (that's less than 5%, and I'm being generous).

Now, if you look at the number of people you can reach with just a blog tour (1k), and the number of people you can reach with a Thunderclap campaign (10k), it's kind of a no-brainer, right? Yeah, you should probably do it.

But how?

Let's get into that now.

First, go to the Thunderclap website:

Click Login/Register:

Connect one of your accounts and give the proper permissions:

You'll see a screen like this:

Click Start a Thunderclap:

You already have your images, but feel free to look at some of the successful campaigns for ideas. Write up a tweet/post, and click Start:

Fill out the form (remember not to shorten your link), and then click create and continue:

On the last page, you're just looking over everything to be sure it's okay. Click submit, and wait. They usually get back to you with approval or denial within 72 hours.

Have you ever used Thunderclap? What were your results?

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo

Creating Your Own Blog Tour - Step Three - Finding Reviewers

Happy Friday! Eek! How much do you love weekends? Today will be awesome. If you believe it, so shall it be. As you can see by the title of this post, today is step three in my post series about creating your own blog tour. Like yesterday, I'll recap the previous days and go update the links in the other posts so you can find your way around the series easily. Ready? Grab those pens and notebooks and let's get going!

In this series:
How to Sign up Bloggers
Creating Promotional Materials and HTML
Finding Reviewers
Creating a Thunderclap Campaign
Throwing a Facebook Launch Party

As you can see, we're getting into where you can find reviewers for your book! Whether it be for ARCs (Advance Review Copies), or after your book has hit the shelves, you can use these tips to find people to read your stories and write down their thoughts.

First off: Never pay someone for a review. An honest reviewer won't take money anyway (they're in it for the books, baby!), and it comes off as sketchy.

#1: Facebook Groups

There are so many groups of readers on Facebook, it would take you forever to go through them all. So, rather than wade through knee-deep muck, let me show you how to get to your target audience.

• Open Facebook
• Go to the Search Facebook bar on the top of the page
• Type in your genre (the master genre, not a sub) and hit enter (don't choose from the dropdown yet!)
• A page will open that has a list across the top: Top, People, Photos, Pages, Places, More\/
• Click More and choose Groups (here's my search for Fantasy)
• Check out groups with readers of your genre, and join one or two you think are relevant
• Introduce yourself and lead with: I joined this group because I'm looking to give away a book in this genre to (x number) of people who may be willing to write a review.
• Don't spam groups, and don't give up. If you don't get enough requests this round, wait a week or two and try another couple of groups.

#2: Amazon

I know this sounds crazy, but go to your book and check out the also bought scroller. See what people are crossing from your book to another, reading, and writing reviews. Try to stick to books in the same genre. When you contact a reviewer who loved another book from the also bought list, tell them others who read that book they loved are reading yours, and ask them if they'd like a copy for review.

#3: Goodreads

This is what Goodreads was made for! There are so many options to find the right reviewer. You can compare shelves, check out books in similar genres to your own (like on Amazon), and join groups readers have formed that revolve around your genre. There are even groups created specifically for folks who like to review. Score.

#4: Bloggers

Go find blogs that have readers of your genre and that write reviews. Follow them for a while, and get to know what they like and don't like. Once you've found a couple, connect with them via comments or other things before you reach out to ask for a review. Book bloggers will remember you. Trust them to be intelligent, thinking beings who have feelings.

You can also ask friends to share a request for reviewers on their Facebook timeline. I did that, and it worked rather well.

Now, a few things to remember:

• If you want ten reviews, you need to have at least twelve reviewers. Some people will forget, and some will miss their deadline.
• Don't be a nag.
• Remember to thank each and every person who reviews.
• Offer the reviewer something besides money (like swag they can't get any other way or a signed copy of the book once the review goes live). Everyone asks, "What's in it for me?" Make it worth their while in the little ways and you'll get more return on your requests.
• People like to feel special. Don't mass e-mail your ARCs. Send them one at a time, include a little thank you with the book, and mention something about the reviewer like: I was happy when you responded to my Goodreads request. I know this takes more time, but it's worth it. You're building relationships. After all, this isn't the only book you're ever going to write, right?
• Ask your reviewers a good month before you plan to send the book to them, and give them a solid date when they can expect it. Don't miss this deadline.
• Give reviewers a good two to three weeks to read the book before release day, and ask them to post their reviews one day after the book goes up for sale (this is for ranking purposes).
• If one of the people who read your ARC don't like your book, find out why (it will help you improve), and thank them for their time. They may not like this one, but may love another one you write in the future. Don't burn bridges!
• Go to the blog where your review is and SHARE IT! Promote those who promote you.

I hope this helps. If you can think of any more, feel free to leave suggestions (no hyperlinks, please) in the comments below.

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo