Virtual Publicity Tours for Freelancers from the Comfort of Home
Posted in Business, Marketing & PR, Work at Home
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By Jennifer Mattern
Do you wish you could get your name out there to promote your freelance work? Do you like the idea of running a publicity tour (like a book tour or media tour), but you don’t have major media connections or a big travel budget to work with? You might want to try a virtual publicity tour instead!
Here is some background on virtual publicity tours, why they’re great promotional tools for freelancers and other home business owners, and four examples of types of virtual publicity tours you might choose to run.
What are Virtual Publicity Tours?
A virtual publicity tour is much like an in-person publicity tour. You “visit” different locations to promote yourself, your products, or your services. You might even plan a tour to promote your blog (what I’m doing in my current month-long virtual blog tour which this article is a part of).
The difference is that you don’t have to leave the comfort of your home office. It’s all online (or over the phone). You get targeted exposure at little to no cost compared to other marketing and PR campaigns, and you can use that exposure to drive traffic to your website or even land some new customers.
4 Types of Virtual Publicity Tours
- Guest Post Blog Tours — Write articles for niche blogs and include a short bio at the end with a link or two to promote your business, blog, or other website. If you’ve published a book or e-book you can also offer excerpts instead of original articles for some of the tour stops.
- Interview Blog Tours — Another way to make your rounds in the blogosphere is to line up interviews (where you’re the interviewee, not the interviewer). Again, you can combine this with guest posts like you could with excerpts. Just remember that if you pitch an interview to a blogger, make sure you give them some good potential angles to work with. “Hey, I’m awesome and I think you should interview me for your readers,” isn’t going to cut it.
- Podcast Tours — Virtual blog tours don’t have to be text-based. Why not become a guest on relevant podcasts or Internet radio shows? All you usually need to take part is a phone. Besides, these tours can be a great way to improve your public speaking skills (always a good thing to have in marketing and PR for your business).
- Social Media Tours — You could also make each “stop” a different social media site on a different day. For example, you might be a guest answering questions live for an hour in a forum or in a social network group. You could also set up a live Twitter chat or be a guest in existing regular chats. Combine that with blog exposure and you have a nice all-around social media tour to promote your business.
Virtual publicity tours are a great option for work at home freelance professionals. But they can help you promote so much more. No matter what kind of business you’re in, if you have a product or service to sell or a site to promote, a virtual blog tour can be a nice blitz to kick off a larger promotional campaign. Why not give it a try? You really have nothing to lose!
About Jennifer Mattern
Jennifer Mattern is a freelance business writer and professional blogger who writes about freelance writing, social media, indie publishing, and small business. She also publishes e-books for freelance writers and is scheduled to publish her first nonfiction book, The Query-Free Freelancer, early next year.
Just wanted to say thanks so much for having me! :)
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Virtual Publicity Tours for Freelancers from the Comfort of Home…
Do you wish you could get your name out there to promote your freelance work? Do you like the idea of running a publicity tour (like a book tour or media tour), but you don’t have major media connections or a big travel budget to work with? You might w…