sallymurphy.com.au

Sally Murphy, Australian author

Five Minute Promo: Day 29

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July is whizzing past, and with it my month of 5 minute book promotion posts. This is the third last day, and I’m going to get straight to today’s task.

5 Minute Promo #29

Take a styled photo of your book with some props or related items, and post it to Instagram. Easy peasy.  Here are two examples. The first includes my book, the doll I bought to act as Sage (the main character) and some chocolate, since that features heavily in the book.Sage with choc

The second is simpler, featuring the book with a pair of earrings which, again, I bought to wear to school visits .A review helps readers to become familiar with your book: and hopefully want to buy it.

Your own photo should in some way reflect the content of your book.

Five minutes starts now. See you tomorrow!

Five Minute Promo: Day 27

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Welcome to Day 27. Five days to go, and if you’ve been following along, I bet you’ve noticed some changes both in your daily habits as well as in the engagement of followers on your various platforms.

Today’s task aims to give your folowers on one platform a broader experience, as well as to perhaps attract new followers. You ready?

5 Min Promo # 27

Start a new Pinterest Board on a topic related to, but not directly about, your book. So, for example, for Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape, I could add to the board about Sage Cookson, a board about chocolate (the food featured in the book), or series books, or adventure books, or even (since Sage loves her mobile phone) a board about mobile phones. Of course, in any one of those boards I could also pin something about Sweet Escape, since it is relevant, but the focus should be on broadening the scope of my board, to draw more readers in.

If you comment below with a link to your new board I will visit it – and I might even follow it. I hope you might do the same for some of my boards.

Something worth Pinning.

Something worth Pinning.

See you tomorrow.

Five Minute Promo: Day 26

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There are just six days left of the 5 Minute Promo challenge, including this one. If you haven’t been following along, that’s fine. You can still join in now, either by going back to the beginning or just by doing the last six tasks. The choice is yours. The idea is to complete a five-minute task each day to promote your latest book. Which leads us to today’s task.

5 Min Promo# 26

Sage Cookson, the title character, is a girl who has lots of adventures.

Sage Cookson, the title character, is a girl who has lots of adventures.

Blog about promotion. You might, as I’ve done below, decide to blog about all the things you are doing to promote your book. Or you might blog bout why promotion is important to the success of your book. Or you might have a really good idea for book promotion that you want to share. Remember, readers do love quick posts.

As always, I recommend you try to include an image in your post and, once posted, I suggest you share it on one or more of your social media channels.

Enough said for today. See you tomorrow.

Five Minute Promotion: Day 24

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Welcome back. We are on the home stretch now, with less than a week to go in this month-long promo-fest. Today’s task is something new to the challenge, in case you are starting to feel too comfortable with all the blogging, tweeting, pinning and instagramming I’ve had you doing. Today’s task, like the one on Day 9 where I had you set up a Google Alert, is about sourcing content for your social media posts. You ready?

5 Min Promo #24

Feedly will help you find content even while you sleep.

Feedly will help you find content even while you sleep.

Open a Feedly account. Feedly is an awesome tool that you can use on your computer or your tablet or phone (as an app), and, as the name suggests, it feeds you content. All you have to do is set up a free account and then choose search terms you want Feedly to find on websites, blogs and news services across the web. You can also use it to follow specific blog or web feeds. Then, every day (or every week, depending on your time and interests), you read the content it has gathered for you. As you find something you think your followers will also enjoy you can tweet about it, add a link to your Facebook page, or pin it. New content at the click of a mouse or a press of your finger.

It should take you less than five minutes to get this set up – but a warning that reading your feed can become so pleasurable and informative that you may find yourself using more than five minutes a day.

Of course, if you are following this challenge and already have a Feedly account, there is still something you can do today: use the five minutes to visit your account, make sure it is up to date, and revisit your search terms. A good spring clean might be just what your Feedly needs.

See you tomorrow.

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.

sallymurphy.com.au