This is a really awesome feature hosted by Midnyte Reader and For What It's Worth all about discussing and venting about bookish topics
This week's (or last week's, hehe) topic:
Does participating in book tours/cover reveals and author guests post drive traffic to your blog? What type of problems have you encountered when hosting them? (please keep it civil - no names or calling specific people out) As a blog follower, are you ever turned off by these kinds of posts? How much publicity is too much?
P.E.'s thoughts
I've done some book tours/cover reveals on my old blog, Tantalizing Illusions and they did get some traffic. Mostly it was the author letting everyone know what happened on what day but I did get a few new visitors. I doubt any of them stayed. I didn't participate in them too much, maybe just a handful of times and never with any of the marquee tours or events. Some posts had a huge spike in views but this didn't mean much for my blog in general.
To be honest, I don't like doing them too much. It's not very much original content and often it's someone that asks me. There's a schedule and it's pretty organized, but a little chaotic in my experience. It ends up clogging my inbox and I'm constantly thinking about posting it on the right date. The formatting also takes a lot of time and in general, I find it a lot of work.
What I don't like is that often, the content isn't original when it comes to blog tours or cover reveals. There's dozens of other blogs posting similar posts and while that can help with exposure for an author, as a blogger it's important to have original, creative posts. I feel like my blog is just for promotions when it's really not. I always consider my posts more about the discussion of books than the promotion.
I've also had some issues when some authors gave in content that was misspelled which totally threw me off. If I fix it, it makes them look good even though they should have done that themselves. If I leave it, it makes my blog look unprofessional. Of course the negative stuff didn't happen very often. Most authors are very professional and respectful. I prefer as a blogger to post my own content however I've always been open to guest posts and the like.
As a blog reader, I very rarely seek out these types of posts. If it's available on my reader, I'll take a look at it but beyond that I prefer reading bloggers' features and reviews. I don't often check out blogs that post exclusively promotional material. The only thing that differentiates any blog from another is the blogger writing the posts so if a blogger seems to be posting almost exclusively promotional material, then they probably won't get a follow from me.
There are exceptions though. If it's an author interview with my favourite author, I will definitely check it out. I guess it's a nice way for authors to show their personality.
There are exceptions though. If it's an author interview with my favourite author, I will definitely check it out. I guess it's a nice way for authors to show their personality.
Those were just my thoughts. What do you think?
I've ran into the problem of authors sending me the same content to multiple blogs. I don't even see how they think that would help them. it took me by surprise at first.
ReplyDeleteI still do a few but I find them to be a lot of work.
I tend not to do stuff like that on my blog -- just not my thing. I don't mind it on other people's blogs as long as they balance it out with original content. If promo stuff is all a blogger does, then their blog is not as interesting to me…
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for stopping by! Jen @ YA Romantics