Promotion | Words For Hire

Written by Karen D. Swim

All week we have been examining the topic of self-promotion. Why this topic and why now?

: Image by vividBreeze via Flickr

Why Self-Promotion?

We can hire people to sell for us or we can partner with others to cross promote products and services but none of this replaces the need for self promotion. Self promotion is sharing your capabilities with others. Whether you are a student, artist, CEO or employee, you must e able to tell others about your talents and abilities.

Our reluctance to self-promote is often rooted in false beliefs such as:

Self-promoting is rude and overbearing
Before we self-promote we have to know more or achieve more.
We’re not that special or we have nothing new to offer.
Self-promotion shows a lack of humility or modesty.
It is disrespectful. No one wants to hear us drone on about ourselves.
It is loud, obnoxious, and always unwelcomed.

Bragging versus Self-Promotion
Self-promotion is not shouting to the world, “Hey look at me, click my links and buy my junk.” Self-promotion is the ability to sell your ideas and your capabilities to those they can benefit.

Many of us have associated self-promotion with negative behavior due to deep-seated beliefs about what constitutes politeness. We have unfairly intertwined selling ourselves with bragging and they are quite different things.

Self-promotion need not be a hurricane. It can be a gentle breeze that softly lifts your hair as it whispers the notes of nature in your ear.

Why you should care?
Would you knowingly withhold information from someone who needed it? In addition to your unique gifts and talents, along your life journey you have collected a vast amount of knowledge and experience. No one has traveled the same exact path as you so it is unfair to assume that you have nothing special to share.

Our world has changed. It is bigger and noisier and wallflowers can get stampeded in the shuffle. In quieter times, the boss would notice your good work and promote you or the townsfolk all knew you and bought from you because of relationship. Today, we cannot keep track of who knows what as we struggle to categorize the daily onslaught of information. Learning to self-promote has become an essential skill set for our work and personal lives.

Self-promotion begins with a belief that we are capable. Your dreams will never come true if you don’t take the steps to make them happen. You may sing like an angel, but no one will know if you never open your mouth and let your voice be heard. So go ahead and sing just hold back on the bass.

How can self-promotion be of value in your own life? Is it a skill set that came naturally or did you have to work at it?

Written by Karen D. Swim

My own descent into full-blown fear of self-promotion began subtly. I was fine when presented with a sales situation, one in which there was a clearly defined prospect. Even cold calling did not bother me, as I somehow was able to effortlessly slide into sales mode. I had spent the better part of my career in sales and marketing or in roles that required the ability to sell.

Cowering Man

Yet, I was uncomfortable with proactive self-promotion that required me to raise awareness of my brand. A problem that may have been quietly tucked away as a quirk or minor weakness in the “good old days” came face to face with the reality of life lived aloud in living color and broadcast to millions of people. There is nothing like social media to slap you in the face with your weakness and magnify it like the trick mirrors in a fun house.

I watched in horror as peers blew past me on Twitter and created ravenous groups of fans on Facebook. I hobbled along like a one legged tortoise in a race against a herd of hares. Everyone else seemed capable of sharing their accomplishments, and telling the world what they did while I stood on the sideline waiting my turn.

I had good excuses. I did not want to bother people. People were being saturated with too much information. I did not want to come across as a know it all. I was going to be nice if it killed me. So, I didn’t invite people to friend me, I rarely promoted my blog, I never invited subscribers and heaven forbid that I should actually send a newsletter to the people who signed up for one. In other words, I did nothing.

As opportunities slipped through my hands my “politeness” started chipping away at my esteem. I believed that I wasn’t in the same league as those who self-promoted. I had a bad case of “not as-itis” – not as good, not as smart, not as credentialed. The questions came fast and furious: Was I too late to join the party? Was my market too crowded for what I had to offer? Oh gosh, why did X client hire me, this project is over my head!

Before I knew what hit me I was hiding under the table with a lion trying to avoid the stampede. Modesty had become a cancer that was affecting my job, and I had to find a cure.

I had scope creep and it wasn’t pretty. The scope of my fear had moved from self-promotion to my confidence in my ability to do my job. A job I had been doing on my own for nearly five years with 20 years of experience to back me. Shocked to my senses, I crawled from under the table and resolved to find the way – to the yellow brick road, Kansas, the Wizard (I already had the cowardly lion after all- I honestly did not care where I went as long as the Land of Scared was in my dust.

You may be tempted to dismiss your fear as a minor inconvenience but I learned the hard way that fear does not always stay in the box you have chosen. The fear of self-promotion in today’s world can cost you in opportunity, dollars and self-respect.

Stick around for the last two posts in this series and I will tell you how I drop kicked my fear like a kung-fu master.

Have you experienced scope creep in regards to fear? What did you do to overcome it?

Caressing You Softly with My Song

Crouching Lion, Hidden Fear