What is self-promotion?

Imagine you’re at a party, and you meet the guy who only wants to talk about himself. You know, that guy. Everything is about him. I bet that’s what you think of when you think about self-promotion: smarmy, selfish tactics that turn people off because they they bring no value.

On blogs, this kind of self-promotion arrives in the form of comment spam.  The kind of comments I hate the most are not the automated ones, but the ones where someone actually put in some time and effort to say something, except they didn’t say anything truly valuable or worthwhile. They just wanted to drop a link. For the time spent, they could have achieved something much more.

On social media, this kind of self-promotion results in one-sided posts that promote only one thing: the person sending the message. These posts (tweets/stumbles/diggs/reddits/whatevers) only contain links to the person’s own sites, contain a large amount of affiliate links, and are often nothing but a sales message. None of this is considered terribly valuable by most people.

Is this all there is to self-promotion?

But is that all there is to self-promotion? Because if it is, we’re in big trouble. Every business needs to promote itself, so how can this be achieved if self-promotion is nothing but selfish ickyness?

Business visionaries like Tom Peters have often said that everyone is a marketer. The question implied by this is: so how good of a marketer are you? Tied to that is the idea that you should be aware of your status as a marketer. Awareness leads to improvement. Improvement leads to sales.

Just as you can sell without selling, you can self-promote without being that guy. How do I know? Because I (and many, many others) successfully do it every day. How? By doing things that don’t seem self-promotional at all, like helping other people.

My highly effective social media strategy has always been to provide value and engage with people. That doesn’t sound terribly self-promotional, does it? But when people have their lives enriched by what I do, how can that not help but promote me? If I engage in this strategy deliberately, then aren’t I promoting myself?

I view it as self-promotion, but in a way that doesn’t seem self-promotional. It doesn’t look like the old ways to promote which we’re all familiar with. People love to give out this “sage” advice about social media: don’t be overly self-promotional. I say that’s wrong. The trick is not to be “overly” self-promotional, the trick is to recognize that you are self-promoting in a completely different way.

Self-promotion 2.0, anyone? (Yeah, I know, but c’mon, what else are we gonna call it?)

Self-Promotion 2.0

Does this really work? Think of it this way: everything you do tells people something about you. The question is, are you aware of what your actions really say? The actions of a comment spammers say they’re only interested in helping themselves at the expense of others’ time and bandwidth. The actions of people who only post links to their own stuff in social media show they have no interest in you, no desire to really connect with you as a person.

When you’re conscious of what your actions really communicate, you communicate the message you want. When you’re deliberately shaping this, it is self-promotion and marketing. When your actions consist of helping others, actively promoting them instead of yourself, and generally providing the kind of value that makes your friends/followers glad they know you, you’re engaged in the best kind of self-promotion possible: the kind that doesn’t look like self-promotion. I don’t know who coined this term, but I like to call this “enlightened self-interest.” I know that helping others is good for me, too.

Follow the Leaders

You can see this in action by observing the success of any person who gathers a large crowd around them on social media. I mean the ones with the really huge followings. One of the main reasons why they draw such huge crowds is because people get what they feel is must-have information and help. Yes, there are other reasons, but this post isn’t about them.

Take Guy Kawasaki, for example. Guy is already well-known in tech marketing and branding because of his former role with Apple and his ability to speak, present, and market well. He created the news and topical super site Alltop. Not everyone likes what Guy does, because they feel he is over-promoting himself on social media (mostly Twitter).

There’s a problem with everyone’s problem with Guy, however. Every time he (or one of his “twitter ghosts”) posts a tweet, it is nearly always a link to someone else’s material. The link is on Alltop usually, or a link to Alltop is also provided in the tweet. In other words, Guy is practicing enlightened self-interest very effectively. When Guy posts your link, you know you’re gonna get some traffic!

By promoting others first, he promotes his own service. Even though some people don’t like what he does or how he does it, Guy’s strategy is an inarguable success. Thousands of people feel that what he does brings value to their lives (including me). You don’t have to be just like Guy to learn from his example. Do things your own way. My way is more low-key than Guy’s way.

They want what you want

We tend to think of self-promotion as something which is unwanted, like spam. That’s true if you’re self-promoting to people who don’t know you, don’t want you, and don’t care about you. But if you’re “preaching to the choir,” you have a much broader leeway allowable in your actions. If someone feels you’re not providing value to their life, they’re free to unfollow you or unsubscribe from your blog, but for the most part, you can assume your audience wants to hear what you have to say… otherwise, what the hell are they doing there?

Of course I don’t mean this to imply that you should just shovel crap at them. But be careful about what it really means to give them “what they want,” because often what they want is what you want to give them. Your readers and followers trust your judgment, discernment, and insights, so give of them freely. Promote others and help people, and you cannot help but also promote yourself in the best possible way.

Inspiration

I had a lively exchange on Twitter with @Gennefer (a must-follow) in which we went back and forth about what is self-promotion. Our conversation is the inspiration for this post, and I wanted to take a moment to give credit where it’s due and thank Gennefer for being a great friend and an always excellent conversationalist. You can check out her website at http://www.gennefersnowfield.com/.

Your take

What are your thoughts on these ideas around self-promotion? Have you tried them and do they work for you? What hasn’t worked for you, and why do you think that is? Please add your comments!