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12 Blog Posts that Tackle the Problem of Self Promotion

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No Need to Be Shameless

A while back, Mack Collier, raised the question Is ‘no self-promotion’ the great unwritten rule of social media? I don’t believe it is.

Though promoting the great work going on around us is the fastest way to get positive recognition, sometimes it’s we’re called upon to let people know what we do and how well we do it. A solid business person, especially someone in social media, needs to be fluent and facile in discussing the skill with which he or she can get the job done.

What follows are some articles I’ve written on the subject that you may missed if you recently tuned in to my blog.

  1. Branding, Self-Promotion, Selling: Are You OverDoing?

    2. We know those times well, when we try too hard to convince others of our brand, apologize for our writing, ask links instead of earning them, or quote text when we should analyze.

  2. Branding: A Tagline Is Not A Brand — How to Build a Positive Brand in 3 Steps

    3. Everyone has brand.
    Your brand may be as simple as You are unknown.
    Not everyone has a unique and positive brand identity.

  3. Two Important Ideas in a Brand Identity and Why We Have to Live Our Brand

    4. People have a way of letting us know we forgot to consider them. They do that by redefining what they think of us and telling each other the new definition.

  4. Shameless Self-Promotion: What Makes It Shameless?

    5. Shameless Self-Promoters see only the game — not the relationship or the other person’s needs. Shameless self-promoters are focused on getting, not giving.

  5. Self Promotion: A Winning Answer Every Time — Why is That?

    6. No one got tied up in the confusion that usually hangs around self-promotion.

  6. Self-Promotion: How I Learned to Stop Shooting Myself in the Foot

    7. As a result we often shy away from any attempt to talk about what we do — fearing we’d be mistaken for the opportunists that we’re not. I used to be the poster child for thinking about self-promotion like that, and it found me getting myself tangled in knots

  7. Self Promotion: Telling Stories for the Painfully Shy

    8. People looking at me make me very self-conscious. Many folks find that a surprise. I write this post for everyone who is shy.

  8. How Too Much Thinking Used to Screw Me Up

    9. I said something about the “ME” in self-conscious. I’ve always thought about it. RK came back and put to words in a pair of comments that said exactly what I always had wondered about . . . am I shy or am I egotistical?

  9. 3.3: Three Steps to an Intriguing Answer to “What Do You Do?”

    10. Many folks would tell you this is the time for your “elevator pitch.” I suggest that term might not be the best way to look at a relationship. Why don’t we say that an authentic conversation is our goal?

  10. Social Media and Promotion: How to Get Your Network Pulling for You

    11. A friend emailed me asking if I would pass along information about a product just coming out. The email was a sale pitch I could pick up and pass on. The rest of the message was over the top for me — kind of pushy and kind of “wink, wink, nudge, nudge — you help me and I’ll help you later.”

  11. Talking Decisions and Self-Promotion with JenChicago

    12. see video

  12. Mind if I Ask Your Network to Help Me Beat Your Car with a Sledgehammer?

    13. Just because you say you’re going to do it,
    doesn’t make it right and it doesn’t make it any more appealing.

Self-promotion is important to a business. If we don’t tell the world we exist and what we do, soon enough we won’t. Hope you find this helpful.

Let me know if you think a favorite is missing from the list. Thanks!

What do you find is the best way to promote your business?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Check out the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar.

How to Promote Your Business Without Being Seen as a Smiling Shark

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Gotta Be Visible Authenticity

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The entrepreneurs and brand managers I work with both often start by asking how to use the social web. Their goal is to promote their business or their brand. The worry that seems consistently common in every first question is that they appear professional and helpful. No one wants to appear to be too aggressive in social web space.

How to Promote Your Business Without Being a Seen as Smiling Shark

When the wrong kind of promotion comes our way, it feels like we’re not being seen as people, but more like prey. Who wants to do business with someone that comes at us like a shark? No one in a marketing or sales role wants to be perceived like that.

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I’ve found that the key to elegant and authentic promotion is being fully present in the conversation. Too often we start talking before we listen. Too often we haven’t fully considered what brought us to be interacting. Knowing who we are, what we offer, and how it fits our reader-customers before we even start a conversation can make promoting a blog, a business, or a brand as seamless as talking to a friend about how our day went.

These questions can get us to that information.

  1. Are you truly passionate and excited about it? If not, go find out how you can be. Be clear on what drives you.

    “Can I tell you why I’m so excited to be working with big companies on big ideas that connect people and change lives in ways that really mean something.”

  2. Can you articulate that passion and excitement? What words explain why you are willing to invest the time of your life building that blog, business, or brand? Be able to tell the story that connects you to what you’re sharing. People will identify with that.

    “Every day people I work with tell me that they think that what we’ve put together to connect with new business is going to be so much easier and so much fun.”

  3. Can you name and claim what you offer so that folks can attribute it you? Can you explain how your blog, your brand, or your business will change people’s lives in a clear and specifically good way? Give that a name so that the idea stick. Draw a picture with words and name that. Become the person who is the only one who provides that.

    “Folks who know how to talk about their unique value attract amazing people who want to be part of what they’re doing. Knowing what you offer is powerful.”

  4. Do you call folks to action and offer them an easy way to talk about what you’re building? Can you show them how joining you will make what they do easier, faster, and more meaningful? If you don’t tell folks how to join, be a part, they could think you don’t want them to. Gotta invite them.

    “If want you to talk about how to do that, it only takes about 45 minutes.”

  5. Do you invite people offer their experience? Do you ask folks how you might reach more people who could benefit from your brand, your book, or your product? If they offer suggestions, do you follow through?

    “If you were me, what would you differently to offer folks like more value in faster, better, more meaningful ways?”

  6. Do you ask people to talk about you? Do you give them ways they might do that, ways that make them feel proud for helping you?

    “So glad you found value, would you tell your colleagues about our work together? I’d love to help them too. We can all grow together.”

Not every questions fits into every conversation. The thing is that when we know ourselves, our business goals, how to partner and how to extend an irresistible offer, promotion gets to be as passionately authentic as the other parts of the work we do.

How do you make sure that your promotion is authentically you?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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Hate Self-Promotion? … Could Trust Be the Issue?

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Deliverables Depend on Trust

Ask a venture capitalist what moves him or her to invest, what you’ll hear is a definition of the word trust. How could it be otherwise? A VC is betting on an investment to pay off. It’s a trust situation. A sure thing doesn’t exist in business.

Trust is part of most every purchase decision we make. We trust that we get what we paid for in working order. We trust that the people who offered it will stand behind their offer.

Trust is also part of the offering. Marketing and promoting what we do also requires trust — trust in ourselves, trust in our products and services, and a bond of trust with the person we’re telling about them.

  • If we trust ourselves, we’re confident that we’ll deliver on the promises we make.
  • If we trust our products and services, we know they’ll meet and surpass the expectations of the person who invests in them.
  • If we have a bond of trust with people about what we do, we’re not worried about our credibility. We talk to them as we talk to our friends, fully expressed and enthusiastic to share something we believe will help. They hear us as we want to be heard.

Do you hate self-promotion and marketing? Could it be that you’re trying to sell before you know the potential buyer trusts you?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your irresistible offer.

How to Build a Yellow Ferrari Product YOU Resume / Brochure

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Make New Rules — Don’t Be the List

Somewhere along the line, you probably learned rules about writing resumes pr asking for sponsorship. You probably learned about starting with your objectives and your history. What I’m about to tell you is going to break rules … make new ones instead.

The old resume was all about you, anyway. In today’s world, the new rules are all about them. Think about the person or people you are writing to or for. They’re the only ones who count.

It’s easy to think of a resume as a list — three suits: two blue, one gray — of what we’ve done. We tend to think of a resume off as one more painful requirement of job acquisition. We tend to think of a request for sponsorship as a list of what we want. That thinking sets us up for major missed opportunities. With a few tweaks, your resume or your request can be a dynamic tool in your business or career strategy.

You may need the list, but you don’t have to be the list.

Make your resume or your request more like a marketing brochure.

Most people will do what we want if we can prove it’s to their benefit.
That’s your quest.

A Yellow Ferrari Product YOU Resume or Brochure

Imagine that you’re a product — a yellow Ferrari.
Build a spec sheet quantifying your performance stats — those THEY care about.
Ask a helpful — not hypeful — marketing person to help you write copy about your soft skills — the skills THEY care about.
You’re well on your way to serious attention.

Include your product history — tell only what THEY will care about — on page 2.

Use Time and Technology to Show Not Tell

In the age of computers, we should be sending out fewer resumes and requests, not more. Ten well-investigated contacts beat out 100 attempts to knock on the wrong doors. Computers make it easier to seek, find, and learn about the people you want to do business with — be they clients, sponsors, or employers. Use the technology show them, not tell them!

  • Make a generic Yellow Ferrari Product You Brochure.
  • Set aside time daily to identify 1 or 2 client, sponsor, employer candidates whose goals match your goals.
  • Research each candidate to understand how your goals and their goals align.
  • Use that information to personalize the sample document for each specific candidate.

When we research a company before we approach them, it changes the way we write. It changes our pitch, our volume, our tone and word choice. We see how our personal skill set might add value in their context rather than talking in a manner that’s shooting blind.

A Sample Outstanding Product You Branding Brochure

Turn a resume into a Yellow Ferrari Product YOU brochure.
PAGE 1: Why not start with …

This document prepared for [Company XYZ] by [Person ABC] a web strategist who can offer tested experience to [goal MNO]

Career Accomplishments — Delivers results.
This is a short bulleted list of quantitative results, such as sales numbers, profit numbers, great hires, Google results.
Always numbers first.

Core Competencies — Tends the Intangibles.
This is sections of qualitative skills, such as team skills, management skills, publishing skills, interdepartmental skills.
Key ideas highly organized.

PAGE 2: With your skill set laid on page 1, you can list your chronology simply with far less detail on page 2. Depending on your industry, you might offer it as a short narrative summary in place of or above the breakout chronology — the way some restaurant menus do. [Be careful. More traditional industries won’t find that inspiring or cute.]

Use It as a Promotional Tool

Change the way you look at your resume and you’ll soon find a world of uses for it. Use it as you do your business card. I’ve sent mine to a business friend with a note saying, “Let me know if my voice might help you in the meetings with the publishers you told me about.” Design Page 1 into your blog’s About Page to let your readers know more about you, your brand, and your business.

Most importantly look over what you feature to focus on what has contributed most to your success. Know that just the act of doing so will make talking about what you do more fluent in the future.

What would you expect in a Yellow Ferrari Product You Resume / Brochure?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Related articles
Building a Personal Brand YOU
Brand YOU — Capitalize on Your Strengths
Personal Branding: Strengths Assessment Tool
Brand YOU –What’s the BIG IDEA?

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Self Promotion: Telling Stories for the Painfully Shy

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Pleeeasse Don’t Look at Me

Business Rules Logo

I was a painfully shy child. They called me “Bashful.” Pictures of me hiding my face or crying on picture day aren’t hard to find. People looking at me make me very self-conscious. Many folks find that a surprise. I write this post for everyone who is shy.

In the conversation on the last post about self-promotion, GL Hoffman said

I find the best and most engaging way is to tell a brief story that sets up your work.

Gl also left a great link to a post on talking about what you do.

I so agree with what GL says that I’m going to tell you a story about telling stories. This is the reason that most folks don’t think I’m shy.

The Story about Telling Stories

My son was also a painfully shy child. He didn’t like people looking at him. When other young children were saying “Hi!” He was a child like I had been — hiding or being uncooperative about such things. Then one day, when he was about thirteen, I noticed a change in his behavior. He had suddenly become entertaining.

That day at work I spoke to a close friend about it. “You know my son has finally found a way to deal with the world. He gets entertaining, telling stories about what he wants to say rather than actually saying it. It’s so interesting. The shift is slight, but I can see it. By doing that he makes so that people are looking at him telling a story, they’re not actually looking at him — who he is.”

My friend Peg said, “Gee, I wonder where he got that from.”

“Guilty. I don’t mind if you look at my work. I think it’s fine if you watch me teach, or speak, or explain something I know. But I sure get self-conscious if I think you are looking at me.”

That’s why GL’s advice is particularly strong.

If you’re self-conscious about self-promoting, explain what you do by telling a story. Then people will be listening to the story and seeing the storyteller in you.

It works. I’ve been doing it since I was 13 too.

–Me “Liz” Strauss

Related
Self Promotion: A Winning Answer Every Time — Why is That?
Shameless Self-Promotion: What Makes It Shameless?
Self-Promotion: How I Learned to Stop Shooting Myself in the Foot