How to Promote an Interview with Another Author

Hi everyone, and thanks for stopping by. Today’s blog reflects upon last week’s interviews between members of the Writers On The Move I’m associated with in Yahoo! Groups.

Last week we paired off, one member hosting another member of our group, posting a background on one day and interviewing each other in the second. I had a lot of fun interviewing my guest Margaret Fieland on my blog site while being interviewed by Harry Gilleland on his blog.

The purpose is to give exposure to other authors. I have an audience that is new and unique to Margaret while Harry has an audience that is new and unique to me. The end result: exposure of our books to a new group of people while providing a forum to express our successes and failures that will help other authors become successful.

For Margaret, it wasn’t enough that I merely hosted her for two days. I needed to take the initiative to promote her and her books. So this was my strategy:

* I leave her interviews up for three days
* I advertised to the other three Yahoo! Groups I belong to
* I promoted her interview via Facebook
* I promoted her interview via Twitter. What I do is take advantage of hashmarks. For example, * I advertise to my followers as well as other groups such as #write, #authors, #and poetry two or three times a day for the three days. This way, Margaret will receive exposure to literally hundreds of new people.

Harry did an absolutely awesome job interviewing and promoting me and my book Breakthrough. For those who need a model of hosting a guest blogger and doing it right, please take a few moments on click on Harry’s blogs dated September 1st and 3rd.
http://harrygillelandwrites.blogspot.com

Let’s take a moment to look at what Harry did right (in no particular order)

* He uploaded a picture of me
* He formatted the interview questions so they are easy for the visitor to read
* He included links to purchase my book Breakthrough
* He included links for my blog and Web site
* He posted reader reviews from Barnes and Noble and Amazon
* He posted the book synopsis
* He posted the book description
* He posted a picture of the book’s dust cover

This is a model that you could certainly save to your favorites, not because my book is being promoted, but because this is an excellent example of how to host a guest blogger Harry, thanks again for a most awesome interview and bringing new traffic to my site.

1 comment:

Karen Cioffi said...

Hey, Steve,

This is great advice. And, giving Harry's site as an example that readers can actually go to and see first hand is very useful.

Thanks,
Karen

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