sallymurphy.com.au

Sally Murphy, Australian author

Five Minute Promo: Day 11

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Welcome back to the 5 Minute Promotional Challenge where every day in July I’m sharing – and doing myself – a five minute task you can do to promote your latest book.

Back on Day 4 the task was to set up or update an author page on Facebook. Today’s task involves finding some new content for that page. Here goes.

5 Minute Promo #11

On your Facebook author page, add a link to an item that relates to your book in some way. That is, not a link about your book, but one which readers of your book might be interested in.

Here are a couple of examples. My author page is used to promote all of my books, and the people who follow my page include my target readership (children) but also parents, teacher, librarians and other book enthusiasts, as well as fellow writers. So, recently, I have posted:

I love to engage with my audience.

I love to engage with my audience.

– A link to an article about writing stories in rhyme in the Guardian.

– A link to an article on The Conversation about why watching sport makes us cry (which I related to books) and

– A link to a post on Publishing Perspectives about copyright issues.

Today I might search for something related to chocolate, since chocolate features heavily in Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape.

Think about your book and your readership, and find an article, blogpost, video or image to share on your author page. This makes your page much more interactive and informative and helps it not just to be a big advertisement.

Clock’s ticking – five minutes and you should be done. Feel free to also tweet the link, or pin an image from the article.

See you tomorrow.

 

Five Minute Promo: Day 10

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Welcome to Day 10, roughly one third of the way through the 5 Minute Promo challenge I have set myself, and which I’m inviting fellow book creators to take part in.

Some tasks have been challenging, and others quite easy. Today is a super easy one, so I’ll get straight to it:

 

5 Minute Promo #10

Head over to that Twitter account you opened (or updated) back on Day 2 and which you’ve hopefully been checking regularly. Now it’s time to build up some followers and to start to use it more regularly. SO, today’s task is to follow 20 new people.

It’s easy to find new people to follow. Twitter suggests people based on who you’ve already followed – ie people or organisations with similar interests – in the right hand column of  the Twitter homepage. You can also find people by looking at who your friends follow, and who they retweet. Or, you can use the search function. For example, I write children’s books, so I could use search terms such as children’s author, or kids’ books, or Australian authors.  But it’s a good idea not to simply follow other authors – I try to follow an eclectic range of people, including booksellers, publishers, librarians, teachers, sports people, entertainers, and people who post quirky things.

So, how does following people help promote your book? Two ways: firstly, the people you follow often follow you back, and thus will see your tweets. Secondly, you learn all kinds of things which may give you opportunities to promote, or interesting tweets which you can retweet and thus engage with your followers.  If you are still not sure what to do on Twitter, it’s worth rereading my previous article explaining what I do on Twitter here.

What are you waiting for? Your five minutes starts now. If you follow me,  that’s only 19 more people you need to find, and I’m likely to follow you back.

Gnomes

It’s always fun to have lots of followers.

5 Minute Promo: Day 9

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Good morning. It’s Day 9 of the 5 Minute Promo series and, if you’ve been following along, by now you should have your Facebook Page, Twitter , Instagram  and Pinterest accounts all set up and have started adding content, including two blog posts and other content. Today’s task is probably going to take you less than five minutes but at the same time it is going to save you time in the future AND help you find new content to share on your various social media platforms. What is it?

It's always good to know what's being said about you.

It’s always good to know what’s being said about you.

5 Minute Promo #9

Set up a Google Alert for your book.  Doing this will mean that any time your book gets mentioned online, you will get an email notification letting you know. Then, once you’ve checked it out and made sure you like what you’re reading <grin> you can share the link to a review, discussion, teaching idea or whatever via your Twitter account, or your Facebook page, or you can Pin the content to your Pinterest board.

I  have a number of these alerts – one for each new book (including, of course, Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape) as well as more general alerts for topics including Sally Murphy Author (that’s me!).

If you’re not sure how to set up an alert, there is a simple guide here.

Enjoy – and drop back tomorrow for the next 5 minute task.

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 2

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Bubbling soda water.

Bubbling soda water.

If you’ve just tuned in, every day for the month of July I am sharing a five minute promotional task you can do to promote your book(s) – and, because I have a new book out (isn’t it pretty?), I’m doing each of those things myself. Without further ado, here’s day 2’s task.

5 Minute Promo #2

Set up a Twitter account. If you don’t yet use Twitter, trust me that it’s so easy it’s something a grandmother (that’s me)  can and does do every day. If you are unsure, there is a good guide here. And, once your set up, I’ve previously blogged about ways to make use of Twitter.

If, like me, you already have a Twitter account (mine’s here), your five minute task is to head over to your account and make sure it’s up to date: is your profile picture current, is your bio the best it can be, and how many people are you following?

Right, timer’s on: go! Once you’re set up, feel free to Tweet me @sallymurphy and I’ll check you out.

Twitter Tips

 

 

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