Sometimes change is good, and this is one of those times. Out with the old, in with the new. So, I have decided to change the name of my blog to reflect the method of delivery of the content I provide to my readers. The new name is RJ’s Word of Mouth Weblog. Let me know what you think. I look forward to reading your comments.

Recently I went on a virtual e-book tour to promote my newly released e-book, “Online Marketing Tools for Today’s Small Business.” For us entrepreneurs and small business owners, writing can be an inexpensive way of marketing our small businesses. This can involve writing articles, blog posts, and/or e-books. It is not necessary to be a well-known author in order to write or have virtual book tours. If you choose to write e-books, you can go on virtual e-book tours to promote your e-book. As a result, your services and/or products, and your business will be promoted at the same time. If you are an author, you, too, can do virtual book tours to promote your books.

Because of today’s technology and blogs, book tours can be done virtually, and it is an inexpensive, creative tactic to advertise your e-books or books. However, coordinating virtual book tours can be time-consuming. If you don’t have time to arrange the tour, outsource this task to a Virtual Assistant. The process consists of you (or your Virtual Assistant) and blog owners coordinating dates for when you will stop by their blogs. On the date of your tour stop, the blog owner can interview you or you can participate in a question and answer session with the blog owners’ readers. If you choose to do an interview, you supply the blog owners with the questions and answers for them to post on their blogs, which is the standard procedure in the current media world. Periodically, you check in to see if there are any questions or comments from the blog readers you need to address regarding your interview.

To encourage the blog readers to get involved, hold some type of random drawing for anyone who submits a comment or question. At http://random.org/, you enter the e-mail addresses of the participants in a list randomizer and a random e-mail address is selected. This would be your random winner. On my tour, I gave away free copies of my e-book to random winners who participated, as well as to the blog owners as a way of expressing my gratitude for them hosting my tour stops.

In my e-book, I discuss various online marketing tools and strategies, which include virtual book tours. If you would like to learn about additional marketing tools that you can use in your online marketing plan, click here to purchase my e-book, as well as find out more about it.