Your tour’s success depends a great deal on you. Even if you have help with organizing your tour, it is important to remember that it is YOU the people will want to get to know. This is why the first thing you need to do once your tour starts is to be present.

It is easy to have someone post content for you to their blog with your bio and picture at the end and forget to visit throughout the day. You want to be sure that you interact with the readers and those who comment during the tour. Take about 5 to 10 minutes to reply to comments, answer any questions that may come up and create a buzz among folks leaving comment.

Sitting back and tooting your horn because people are reading or listening to the comment will not work.

If you are going to be a guest on a podcast that is featured on a network like Blog Talk Radio make sure that you take a moment to visit the chat room if it is not too much of distraction.

The goal here is to share you in a genuine manner and not to appear phony.

You also want to be sure to promote during your tour as well.

• Remind your list and send them a copy of your itinerary.
• Tweet it, Facebook it, and talk about it every chance you get.
• Write about your stops on your blog. Highlight special points, comments you found interesting, etc.

I wrote about promoting your tour here in this post.

The bottom line here is not to do a disappearing act, expecting results. If you disappear so will your opportunity to increase your bottom line.

Have fun on your tour, be focused and most of all be PRESENT!

This is the end of this series. I hope that you enjoyed the tips I shared to help you organize your virtual blog tour. Remember this is a great free to low cost way to market your business, spread your message, and meet another segment of your market.

If you are ready to set up your virtual blog tour and would like to read more about how to organize one, I cannot stop recommending Nicole Dean’s Blog World Tour Guide. It is filled with valuable information that you can use along with the tips I share here to organize a dynamic virtual blog tour event.

If you are ready to set up your virtual blog tour but know that you can’t do it alone, Social Savvy Online Business Solutions offers packages that will help you spread the word effectively.

The day before your tour starts you want to make sure that you have a few things in order. Here is a simple checklist to help you out…

• All graphics ready to place in posts. If you are using picture have them ready to go as well. Create a file just for your tour with a folder just for images. Name the images according to that post they match. Some great places for free images include Stock.xchng, 123rf, and Stockvault.net.
• All content is ready to go. Again, putting all content in a folder just for the tour helps so much.
• Content had been uploaded for at least two days. Whether you are adding it to the blog or the host is, you want to be sure they have the content in time for upload it at least two days out. This way you avoid any little mishaps along the way. Be sure that the host has the images and any special instructions if they are choosing to upload the content themselves.
• You have contacted the host to remind them of the date that you will be stopping by their blog. If you are set to be a guest on a podcast, then you have contacted the host of the show to confirm the date.
• You have notified your list, tweeted, talked about it on Facebook.
• You have sent out your press release.

It is time to get ready for the fun now.

Day 12 we will talk about what to do during the tour.

Have you missed any of the Organizing Your Virtual Blog Tour tips. Catch up here.

Simply put – It is just nice to be nice!

With that said, when you are conducting your tour, it is important that you provide some sort of incentive for your new audience. I remember when I was young it is customary for people to bring something when they were invited to someone’s home. Be it a bottle of wine, some fresh homemade bread, or a batch of cookies, you seldom went empty handed.

The same is true for your virtual blog tour. You want to make sure that you give the host something by giving their readers something. Even if your tour includes podcast and radio, offer something.

It is also a good idea to be very grateful to the host by sending them a thank you card, gift card, or something  like that.

When it comes to trying to decide what to giveaway on your virtual tour, the first thing you want to consider is the theme of your tour. Whatever it is about you want the giveaway to match.

Something ideas for giveaways are…

• Exclusive reports for blog tour participants only.
• Audio versions of the content you provide for the blog tour.
• Access to your membership site for a limited time.
• Cheat sheets
• Access to your information product vault. You can set one up just for the participants and provide products that fit the theme of the tour.
• A recipe book
• Free marketing graphics
• Free templates
• Grand prize for one participant of  the entire tour or you can choose on from each blog you visit along the way. The grand prize can be a lifetime membership, coaching, a free blog design, or something really cool like that.

How you run the giveaway is up to you. You can choose to give something away each day or to do one big grand prize at the end of the tour.

Whatever you decide make it worth the effort people will put in to participate.

Day 11 will be about what to do the day before your virtual tour.

Have you missed any of the virtual tour tips. You can catch up here.

This is an easy one. You are ready to promote your tour. Promoting may seem hard but there are many ways to promote your virtual tour and most are free.

• I already mentioned Press Releases in this post. So read about them and get one written if it is your desire.
• Blog it. Talk about your tour on your blog. Let people know the who, what, where, when, and why of your tour. Also be sure to mention what is in it for them. And don’t just tell them about it the day off. Create a couple of posts that lead up to the day of the tour. Center the posts on the theme of the tour and peak the interest of your readers.
• Facebook It. If you are on Facebook then let folks know about it there too. Use the event application to create an online invite and invite your FB buddies to join you.
• Tweet Tweet. Talk about your tour on twitter everyday one week prior, the week(s) of and even after. Remember that those posts  interviews will be there for the long haul, so don’t stop talking about it when the tour ends.
• Invite your list. Jimmy D. Brown says that the money is in the list, so be sure to invite your list. Again let them know the who, what, where, when, and why. Tell them why the want to join you on the tour and what’s in it for them. You can even offer them a special incentive if they help you promote the tour. Offer a special checklist for subscribers only or a quick 5 page report. But they have to be able to prove they helped promote your virtual tour.

On Day 10 the topic will be Ideas for Giveaways and Prizes

If you have missed any part of this series, you can catch up by clicking here.

Dr. Daisy Sutherland is known to many on the internet as Dr. Mommy. She is in the business of helping mothers so that they can help their families.

She hired Social Savvy Online Business Solutions to help her put together a Virtual Tour. She wanted to stick with blogs and she wanted them to be geared towards healthy living. We decided to center is around the holidays.

I wanted to ask Dr. Mommy a few questions about her experience and she obliged.

Why did you want to do a virtual tour?
I chose to do a virtual blog tour because I wanted to give my site and my topics more exposure.  I recently added a podcast to my site and felt with having a virtual tour, I would have the opportunity to market my site and podcast to a larger group of people

How did you find the hosts for your tour?
Thankfully I had a social media strategist that was able to help me promote my upcoming tour on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn as well as marketing on my site.  The hosts who showed interest were given the information necessary to be a part of my tour.

How did you create the content for your tour?
Creating content was the easy part.  Since my strategist and I had chosen the theme, I simply found posts or articles I had written in the past that would fit the theme.  I then re-purposed them by changing the titles, some of the paragraphs and updating the topic to fit the theme better.  I also wrote some fresh new content but that was not entirely necessary.

What was the most beneficial part of your tour?
The most beneficial part of the tour was the opportunity for a larger group of people to learn more about my site, my information and my products.  It was also great for the hosts, because they were able to take a break from writing and allow me to share pertinent content related to the tour and their market as well.

What was the outcome of the virtual tour?
The virtual tour was very successful.  I had several sign up for my weekly Ezine, as well as many more downloads of my podcast episodes and sold several of my products as well.  All and all it was very successful.

Do you suggest that one organizes their tour with or without assistance? Why?
Although it is possible to organize a tour on your own, I suggest having assistance if available.  The assistance makes it easier for you to concentrate on providing the content.  The assistant will take care of the posting of your articles and communication with your hosts which is less work for you in the end.

Would you do another virtual tour?
I would absolutely do another virtual tour.  Marketing online is essential to any business whether online or offline.  With an online business it is even more essential to find ways to market your site, services and products.  A virtual tour gives you the opportunity to market to more folks that may not be aware of your business and what you have to offer.  If exposure is your desire, then a virtual tour is the way to go.

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I want to thank Dr. Mommy for answering the questions about her virtual tour experience. To learn more about all the Dr. Mommy does be sure to visit her site today. For healthy tips for better living check out her health tips blog.

Day 9 will be all about Promoting Your Tour.

If you want to catch up with all the posts on Organizing Your Virtual Tour click here.