For the author--- or would-be writer--- who begins a blog, the CSFF blog tour is a chance to gain a few readers for your blog. I always tend to notice, on the tour, some of the blogs on the tour that don't seem to have blog readers yet, the bloggers who are just beginning to learn how to blog effectively.... I think participating in the tour can really help that.
The Visiting Round
One of the best parts of the blog tour is visiting the blogs on the list of blog participants. You don't have to be an official participant of the blog tour to do this. If you've accidentally found this blog post and never even heard of the CSFF blog tour before, perhaps you've never realized there was such a thing as Christian science fiction and fantasy before, you can still visit the blogs on the participant list.
Commenting is the most important thing about the Visiting Round. After you've read the blog post, it's good to say SOMETHING. It can be really hard to think up a good comment sometimes. But, hey, it's a blog tour. Just saying hello and telling the blogger you are visiting the blogs on the tour list is a good beginning for a comment. Then make a remark that relates to the post. Even if you have a bad case of 'commenters' block' and can't think of anything to say that doesn't resort to the word 'interesting', your comment will be encouraging to the blogger. And most bloggers these days are wise enough to visit their commenters' blogs and comment back.
Meeting the Author is an exciting aspect of the blog tour. The featured author has a blog and also participates in the tour. Not ALL blog tour authors make the rounds of the participating blogs, but most do. This month's author Robert Treskillard started making the rounds of the participants early in the day on day one. It's very exciting to have a real, traditionally-published author commenting on my blog! While visiting Robert's blog, I found out how to connect with him on social media, and so now have another author on my 'authors I kind of know but not really' list.
Robert Treskillard links:
*Merlin’s Shadow - http://www.amazon.com/
Author Website - http://www.KingArthur.org.uk
Author Blog - http://www.epictales.org/blog/
Following blogs is another thing you can do while doing the Visiting Round. I nearly always click on the 'follow' widget if it's the Blogger one. There are also other 'follow' widgets you can find on blogs, NetworkedBlogs being the next most popular after the Blogger one. I find that if I follow ten new blogs, I will get about 3 or 4 blogs to follow me back. Sadly, the Blogger widget only allows you to follow 300 blogs though some blogs have thousands of followers, which is kind of hard on the reciprocal-following concept. But you can follow from a widget when you are above the 300-blog limit, which is one good reason to provide a 'follow' widget if you have a Blogger blog.
The Link List:
This is your Big Opportunity to visit blogs and build more traffic for your own blog. Use it well.
Red Bissell Thomas Clayton Booher Beckie Burnham Jeff Chapman Pauline Creeden April Erwin Victor Gentile Ryan Heart Timothy Hicks Jason Joyner Carol Keen Jennette Mbewe Amber McCallister Shannon McDermott Meagan @ Blooming with Books Rebecca LuElla Miller Joan Nienhuis Nissa Jalynn Patterson Writer Rani Nathan Reimer Chawna Schroeder Jacque Stengl Jojo Sutis Robert Treskillard Steve Trower Shane Werlinger Phyllis Wheeler Deborah Wilson
My Facebook writing page:
http://www.facebook.com/NissaAnnakindt
You know, this is probably one of the most helpful posts on the tour. It has never occurred to me to provide a guide to the tour, so this is really cool!
ReplyDeleteRobert, for a long time I've thought about writing about the tour itself, because I feel bad for some of the bloggers I encounter who seem to be just beginners at blogging and don't really know what to do yet.
ReplyDeleteIf I can help just one person build a better blog and feel more confident about what they're doing, I'll be happy.