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Sally Murphy, Australian author

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Five Minute Promo: Day 20

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Phew. This is my twentieth post for the month about quick promotional tasks you can complete to get word of your book out to the wider world. If you’ve just joined me, feel free to scroll back through the other nineteen posts (and extra posts in between).

Murphpup

Not THAT kind of layout.

What possessed me to undertake a month of daily posts about promotion? My new book, Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape, which came out on July 1, leading me to wonder what things I could do to promote the book that weren’t so time-consuming that I didn’t have time to work on the fourth book in the series (which has now winged its way off to the publisher), work on my Doctoral project, travel to two conferences, and myriad other things.

So, over to today’s task.

Five Minute Promo #20

Write a blog post about design and layout. What you focus on will depend on your particular book and your unique knowledge. I’ve chosen, for example, to focus on the cover design and, more broadly, on the role other people played in my finished book. You might talk about how illustrations and text are placed, or which font was used, or why the index is in a different font than the rest of your book, or anything else you can think of.

Remember, it’s a quick post – though of course you can take as long as you like. Clock’s ticking, so off you go, and I’ll see back here tomorrow. In the meantime, leave me a comment, if you have time, and let me know how you’re getting on with all this promo.

Five Minute Promo: Day 19

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It’s Day 19 and time to get your book further afield. Today’s task aims to spread the word in a new space. Ready?

5 Minute Promo # 19

Spreading the word far and wide.

Spreading the word far and wide.

Email another blogger (ie a blogger another than yourself) and ask them to interview you or otherwise host you on their blog.  This can be confronting, but is a great way not just to spread the word about your book but also to make a friend, especially if you reciprocate by inviting them to visit your blog, either now or later.

Can’t find a blog to visit? I’m going to make it super easy-peasy for you. If you are Australian, visit my other website Aussiereviews.com and then email me through the site and ask if I can host you for the Meet My Book feature. Unless I am swamped by hundreds of requests, I will be happy to send you the questions and schedule your post very soon. How easy is that?

A word of warning: whether it’s my blog or someone else’s, always visit the site before you email, and show that you know your book is a good match for what they do. And be polite. Most bloggers are unpaid and do what they do in their spare time, so showing respect makes their task much more enjoyable.

The clock is ticking: five minutes is all it will take. Go!

 

Five Minute Promo : Day 18

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Welcome to day 18. On Day 11 I had you share a related item on Facebook, and on day 12 I had you share an unrelated item on Twitter. Today’s task has you sharing something which may be either on another social media platform – and this is one I’m looking forward to.

5 Min Promo #18

Take a photo of something yummy and share it on Instagram. If your book focuses on or features any particular foods, you might create an instagram post featuring that food. But, if not, feel free to take a photo of anything yummy- a sweet treat, a steaming bowl of soup, even some fresh fruit. People love pictures of food and, when they engage with that picture, they may head over to read your profile which, in turn, promotes your book.

Here are a couple of simple examples I have used before. This is a photo of the first, perfect, cherry tomato I picked last year. Later, I also used it as the subject for a Poetry Friday post.

Tomato 2015

And here’s a more recent one, featuring chocolate, Sweet Escape and my Sage doll.

Sage with choc

So, clock’s ticking, off you go and snap a photo. If it takes less than five minutes, use the rest of your time to check your other social media accounts. See you tomorrow.

Five Minute Promo: Day 17

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Welcome to day 17. If you’ve been doing each day’s task, by now you’ll have several social media accounts, which you are hopefully using regularly. You’ll also have set up a Google alert and email signature line, and be blogging about your book regularly. And by now you’re hopefully starting to get some feedback on your book (and also on your social media efforts, in the form of new followers, or shares or retweets). Today’s task gets you to look for – and share – some of that feedback.

5 Minute Promo #17

Areview helps readers to become familiar with your book: and hopefully want to buy it. Find a review of your book and share it on Twitter and your Facebook page, as well as Pinning it on your Pinterest page. Of course, because you’ve set up a Google Alert (haven’t you?) then you might already be aware of a review. If not, use a search engine, or  visit your favourite book review websites and blogs. Then, once you’ve read the review and ascertained that it is at least mostly positive, share it.

BUT, I hear you say, what if I can’t find any reviews. Good question – and, I must admit that as I wrote this post I went and checked for reviews of Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape and didn’t find any. SO, here’s what you can do. head over to Goodreads, a site where you will find lots of reviews and rankings of books. Search for your book there. You may find that your book is already there. Great. If not, as I found with my book, you can add a record for it. It took me less than two minutes to create an entry for Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape. You can see it here.  Once you’ve got your list on Goodreads, you can either wait for people to review or rank it, or you can use your social media to gently ask people (remember, pushing for reviews will put some people off) who have read it to give it a short review.

Go to it, and use the comment section below to tell me how you go.

Five Minute Promo: Day 16

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Welcome to day 16. I’m having a lot of fun writing this series of posts and also carrying out each five minute task myself as I promote my new book Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape. I know people are reading them because I’m getting new followers on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram. But it would also be lovely to get more comments and questions here on the blog, just so I know who’s listening and what you are finding does or doesn’t work for you.

Anyway, over to today’s task.

5 Minute promo #16

Head over to Twitter and tweet about someone else’s book. That’s it. Write a tweet about a book that you love – could be a new release could be an old favourite. Add a link, or a photo or whatever you like.

Here’s a book I’ve recommended on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. It’s a good one.

Why? Because your Twitter followers love to hear about things other than YOUR book. And because, as an author yourself, you know how great it feels to hear that someone else likes your book.  It’s called spreading the love – or paying it forward.

This task is so quick that it may not take five minutes. So, use the rest of your five minutes to update your other social media. Or take a four minute breather 🙂

See you tomorrow.

 

Five Minute Promo: Day 15

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Welcome back. By the time you’ve completed today’s task you’ll be halfway through the 5 Minute Promo challenge (actually, if you want to be technical, since there’s 31 days, you’ll be slightly off, but hey – I’m a wordsmith, not a mathematician). If you’ve been playing along, hopefully by now you are seeing that this promo lark is not that hard – and can, in fact, be both fun and rewarding. To mark the halfway point, I’ve set you a nice easy task. Let’s begin.

5 Minute Promo #15

Sage Cupcake Earrings

An image I’ve posted on Instagram recently.

Head over to the Instagram account you created way back on Day 3 (and which you’ve hopefully been updating ever since) and follow 20 new people (or ten, or a dozen,  or as many as you can find in your five minutes). As with the task I set you a few days ago to follow new Twitter accounts, the point of this exercise is both to create mutual engagement as well as to see and find new material. The people you follow should not all be fellow authors – remember you shouldn’t be promoting just to other creators.

So, how do you find new people to follow? Easy. Press the ‘Discover’ button on your account and you will get a list of  suggested accounts – usually people who you already follow on other social media platforms, or people followed by other people you follow. You can also search using the search book. Pick a search term you are interested in, then scroll through the results and look for people to follow.  If you’re not yet following me, feel free to do so why you’re there and I’ll try to follow you back.

Enjoy, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

sallymurphy.com.au