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About two years ago some girls and I got together and cooked up the idea to push a review site. True to our style, we dubbed ourselves the Book Addicts, and got started. There were a lot of things we had to learn how to do to manage the site and our schedule, and one of those things was setting a process for hosting book tours and guest blogs.
Getting to host these authors and help push their books is an honor and a great way to introduce yourself to that one writer you’ve always adored and fan-girl over. But the excitement of hosting isn’t enough to make it happen. In the changing world of blogging and reviewing, it’s more important than ever to behave professionally and communicate clearly. That’s not to say you can’t freely tell an author how much you loved that one title on their backlist and how you’ve bought ten copies on top of the five you’ve worn out.
Communication is key. It’s what will make or break you and the people you work with. My first piece of advice for people who want to host guests on their sites is to have a clear and easy way to contact you. A generic contact form is nice, but a place on your site that lists your email address works just as well. If you want to go one step further, use a professional sounding email address. For example, YourName@gmail or YourWebSite@yahoo are great options because they tell people who they are communicating with, whereas girlygirlwithpants@email leaves one wondering if this was a good choice or not.
If you’re going to host guests often, having a contact page that also includes guidelines about what you’re looking for in guest posts makes both your life and the life of your posters easier. Something that states the minimum and maximum length of a blog, the content restrictions if you want to keep it G rated, and any other particulars. At Book Addicts, for example, we’re fine with promotion, but we prefer that there’s something else to a post besides just promo. Tell us about where the seed of the idea that sparked the story came from, and then pitch the readers your book. If you would like to go the extra step, you can also include the average daily traffic statistics so that guests know what to expect when visiting your site.
Finding places to list your site as a possible host can help point potential guests to your site. Savvy, for example, does a great job of that. Book Addicts has hosted several Savvy Authors. Listing or offering on other forums can gain more guests. As far as deciding how often or how many guests to host, that is up to the people running the site.
It helps to have something in place to help organizing your schedule when it comes down to booking guests. A calendar or a spreadsheet can easily keep you on track with what needs to be posted, days that are available to guests and when you need to send a kind reminder to a guest for a post.
For the benefit of both the host and guest, having a clearly defined due date for guest blogs is beneficial. We live in a world where everyone is juggling multiple things. Having due dates lights the fire under everyone’s bum. As far as hosting blogs, it’s nice to get them ahead of time. If a guest misses their due date, you can politely remind them that their guest spot is coming up soon, and to please send it. In addition, you can schedule blogs to post automatically which relieves both the host and guest of the responsibility of remembering to hit Publish at a certain time.
A few helpful things to do with guest posts is to include links to their website, social media profiles and books or products. Tagging blogs with key words helps increase searchability with search engines. Some hosts will even email guests to notify them when a post goes public. These are all extras that help all parties involved.
So, to recap all of the above:
1. Be professional.
2. Communicate!
3. Make it easy to contact you.
4. Know your expectations and provide guidelines.
5. Communicate your requirements.
6. Keep yourself organized.
7. Schedule blogs in advance if you can.
8. Communicate with your guests.
Do you see a theme here? In short, if you keep yourself organized, communicate timely and clearly with your guests, you’ll get a seamless process down to fit your needs.
Cid can be contacted at: cid {at} book-addicts(.)com. You can also check up on her and her twittering craze by following @CidTyer.
Book-Addicts.com @BookAddicts
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