Today I’m embarking on a “virtual blog tour” on behalf of The Whale Hunters. Our purpose is to connect with a larger audience of small business owners and sales representatives worldwide.
I engaged Nikki Leigh, founder of Promo 101, to conduct this tour for me. It’s like a book tour, only it all takes place online, and instead of promoting a book, it is promoting a service–in this case, our website. [This is the second blog tour I’ve done with Nikki; I highly recommend her services!]
Here’s how it works. Nikki connects with bloggers, online magazine publishers, and radio hosts from around the world who write and talk about small business issues. She invites them to have me as a guest blogger, or talk show interviewee, or article contributor. She schedules these activities over a period of time–we chose two months. So over two months, I’ll have about 40 “appearances” (roughly one each business day) — in print and on the air–about all facets of The Whale Hunter Process™.
There’s work involved for me. I need to write guest blog posts and new articles and respond to interview questions in advance of a call. But of course I am generating new content at the same time, so it’s useful.
So here are five reasons that I think a Virtual Blog Tour is a great publicity idea for a small business introducing a new product or service through internet marketing:
- You can reach the audiences of each blogger, publisher, or radio host who invites you to contribute.
- You will develop a long list of permalinks to content about your company, on the web, being covered by many different sources, establishing your credibility as a thought leader.
- You can boost your search engine ratings dramatically.
- You can increase traffic to your own website, blog, or landing pages.
- You can develop media contacts and bloggers who will want more content from you on a regular and consistent basis.
This is a truly inexpensive and productive marketing strategy. It constitutes a whale hunt of sorts, because you are trying to attract the most influential bloggers in your space to include you in their blogs and radio shows. I will keep you posted about how it goes.
