sallymurphy.com.au

Sally Murphy, Australian author

Five Minute Promo: Day 6

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Set your timer and get ready for today’s 5 minute task, because I’m going to jump straight into it. Yesterday I promised the last day of getting you to sign up for social media platforms, so today I want to suggest you do something quick and easy – and it’s about signing something rather than signing up.

Day 6: Creating an Email  Sig Line

If you are like me you probably write and send dozens of emails every week. Some are writing related and others aren’t. But every one of those emails can bear an advertisement for your book or books. If you email your child’s teacher about her homework -and there’s a signature line? Your teacher learns about your book. If you forward a referral to your doctor? Your doctor learns about your book. If you send a query to a new ediotr? The editor learns about your previous book AND sees that you are willing to promote your work. It’s win win.

So, today’s task is to open up your email program and create a signature line which advertises your book (or books). Here’s a screenshot of mine:

EMail Sig Line

You can see mine has pictures, my name plus the URL of my website. You could use text instead of pictures, and you could add more links (for example to online bookstores). There’s lots of possibilities.

 

There’s a quick guide to creating a signature for Outlook: here. If you use a different program, use a search engine and you will find a similar guide.

So, what are you waiting for? Your five minutes starts now. As awlays, feel free to leave me a note, or tweet me and let me know how you go.

5 Minute Promo: Day 5

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Gosh. It’s Day 5 already. July is whizzing by. and, hopefully, if you’ve been following along, you’ve been busy spending a whopping 5 minutes of each day promoting your book(s).  If you haven’t, just twenty minutes (give or take a few) will bring you up to speed, ready to tackle day 5’s task which is (drumroll please)…

5 Minute Promo #5

Set up a Pinterest account. Yes, you’ve got it, I want you to join another social media platform. This is the last one, I promise (for now!). So, after you’ve read my few words, head over to Pinterest, sign up and you are ready to Pin. There’s simple instructions on how to get started here and instructions on how to set up a board and start pinning here. You might extend your five minutes and set up a board about your book. Here’s one I’ve set up for Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape here.

Already on Pinterest? Your five minute task is to make sure your profile and account is up to date and, once that’s done, use the rest of your time to pin two new pictures to one of your exitsing boards. Easy peasy. Feel free to follow me, Sally Murphy Author, while you are there.

Pinning is easy and fun. Here is a sample of things I’ve pinned from this site:

Read a kids Book

A quote with photo – and, of course, my web address so people know to visit me.

And:

Looking at You 3

A poem I wrote, added to a photo I took and again with my URL and twitter handle.

 

 

5 Minute Promo: Day 4

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Welcome to Day 4! If you are following along at home, by now you have written a blog post, opened or updated your Twitter account and opened or updated your Instagram account. You’ll have noticed that so far all of the tasks I’m sharing are to online – because using social media and the internet is such a quick, free way of promotion. And today, I continue that trend.

5 Minute Promo #4

Create a Facebook Author Page.Assuming you are already a member of Facebook, it will take only a couple of minutes to start a page for you, the author. There’s a quick guide to starting a Page here.

I posted this pic on my Facebook page the day my author copies arrived.

I posted this pic on my Facebook page the day my author copies arrived.

An author page is different than your personal profile where you can post about your kids, your walks on the beach, or your dog. Instead, your Facebook page is about your brand as an author. Having said that,  not every post will be about selling your book. As a starting point, use your author photo (if you haven’t got one, it’s time to take one), a header picture which might be something from your website and add a cover photo of your book. Once you’ve posted something, invite your friends to like it.

Already have a Facebook page? Of course you do! Then your five minute task is to make sure your photo is up to date, and post something new. Then, because your five minutes won’t be up yet, invite the friends who haven’t yet liked your page to like it now.

Want to see what a Facebook author page looks like? Feel free to look at mine and follow it. I’ll do my best to entertain you with regular fresh content.

5 Minute Promo: Day 3

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Welcome to Day 3. If you’ve been playing along, by now you’ve posted a blog post about your new book, and set up or updated your Twitter account. Each of these things should have taken you only about 5 minutes. That’s why this series is called 5 Minute Promo. If you are new to the series, feel free to take minutes to catch up. I’ll wait here <grins>.

Okay, so time for today’s five minute promo task. You ready? Good

5 Minute Promo #3

Head over to Instagram  and set up an account. You can do this on your desktop or laptop, but will find it just as easy to use a phone or tablet – and to download the app. That’s because Instagram is designed for phones and so works best there.  Not sure what to do? There’s a quick help guide here, which will guide you step by step through the process. Once you’re set up, feel free to follow me @sallymurphyauthor  and drop me a line so I can follow you back. All of this should take you less than five minutes.

 

If you  already have an Instagram  account, use the five minutes to check that your profile picture, bio and account details are up to date, and of course to post a picture or like the pictures of others.

Not sure what to post? Here’s a recent photo that I posted:

Sage Cupcake Earrings

You can see I took an opportunity to show off my new book (have I mentioned before how much I love the cover? ) as well as the new earrings I’d bought to celebrate its release.

See you tomorrow for Day 4. In the meantime, if you’re enjoying these tips, or have any questions or comments, feel free to comment here and I’ll get back to you.

5 Minute Promo: Day 1

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If you a regular follower of this blog, you might know that today is release day for my new book: Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape. If you are not a regular follower, firstly, welcome and secondly, you know that it’s the release date etc. And, by the way, isn’t the front cover amazing?

Cover Sage Cookson 1

Anyway, back to the purpose of this post: 5 Minute Promo.

As an author, I’ve long been aware just how important it is to promote my own books. Sure, my wonderful publishers do their bit, but they have lots of books by lots of authors to promote. Wheras me, I only have my own books to focus on, and generally one at a  time. But I’m busy – sometimes frantically so – writing new books, working my way through a PhD project, visiting schools, festivals and conferences, not to mention running a household. So, my promotion can’t take hours and hours every day.

Ont op of that, the most important time for me to be promoting my new book is in the first month of its release. Bookshops get new stock in every month. That means my book is only new for a month. If I want it to sell well, it’s important that I promote heavily during that month, in the hopes that it will sell well the booksellers will continue to stock it, and stock my subsequent books.

So, putting those two things together: the need for quick promotion ideas, and the need to do them especially in that first month, I sat down and brainstormed 31 things (one for each day of the month) that could be done in five minutes or less.

And, because I like sharing, I’m going to share those 31 things, one each day. So, if you have a book to promote, or have one coming out soon, you can play along at home. Every day I will post a new five minute tip, and give examples. If you join in, let me know how you are going, either by commenting here, or on twitter  (feel free to follow me).

 

So, enough about what I’m going to do. Let’s get on with it. Here is the first idea.

5 Minute Promo #1

Write a blog post announcing your new book . Make sure you include the cover image, and a link to where the book can bought. Give some details about the book.  (If you don’t yet have a blog, then use the five minutes to head over to a free blog platform such as wordpress or blogger and set up a simple blog).

Here’s my post (or you can just scroll down) which I combined with a post about Poetry Friday, because that’s my usual Friday post, and because it will spread the word to my poetry network.

Playing along? Set your timer for five minutes and head off and write and post that blogpost, then leave a comment below with a link and I will check it out.

 

 

sallymurphy.com.au