Give yourself a “thumbs up”! (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Are you someone who is a bit shy about promoting your website, your business, the new book you are writing (Joan, that is you), or something else that you wish other people would find out about and spread the word about how fabulous you are?
You do not want to come off as too obsessive or pompous, so you just sit and wait for the right opportunity to come along. Or the right person who is willing to promote your work for you.
Stop doing that….
The whole month of October is dedicated to self-promotion, making people aware of your presence. So if you are working on a project that you think people would benefit from in some way, LET THEM KNOW ABOUT IT, damn it. What is the point in creating anything if you do not share it with the world?
Some people want you to think that self-promotion is a bad thing, but it is not bad at all. It is telling the world, “Hey, this is important to me, and I hope it is important to you, too.”
Do not be afraid to go out there and shamelessly and incessantly promote your hard work.
Take my friend, the aforementioned Joan, for instance. (She will probably kill me for talking about her, but oh well…) She has been diligently working for over a year to collect information about the life and murder of Carl Switzer, who was famous for his role as Alfalfa in the Our Gang series. Lately she has become a bit protective of her work for whatever reason. She does not know if she wants to keep a blog to update others who might be interested, or share any other information with people on this project.
What Joan and other people like her need to realize is, that some (even if it is minimal) promotion of this type of thing is necessary to get people interested in the project and help spread the word about it. If Joan wants people to know the truth about Switzer, she needs to start promoting her work…but as I told her, she does not want to give everything away because then there would be no reason for people to buy the biography.
Remember that, folks: shamelessly self-promote, but do not give everything away. Tease people. Entice them. Make them want to find out more. And do not be so overprotective that everything you have done becomes useless.
So how can you shamelessly self promote this October? Try some of the following things that will put you in the public’s eye.
- Start a blog. Even if it has a small following, blogging about your passions or your upcoming project will help people connect with your work on a more personal level.
- Start a Facebook fan page or Twitter account. Do you have any updates you want to share with people about your project? Put them on Twitter or a Facebook fan page.
- Send out a press release. Have you got something newsworthy? Let the media know about it. There are plenty of resources online that can help you set up a free press release and get the word out.
- Put your links everywhere. If you have a blog or website you want to promote, put the link everywhere—in letters, in e-mail, on business cards, on fliers you attach to a lamp-post on the street or on a bulletin board at the supermarket.
- Recruit friends and family to share your stuff for you. Unless you are working on something that you would be embarrassed to tell granny about, then give her a ring and ask her to tell a friend and have them tell a friend about what you are doing. Repeat this with everyone you know. It is surprising how quickly the word will spread.
There are countless other things you can do to shamelessly promote your work. Do you have any tips and tricks for anyone who needs to get out and get something done this October? What has worked and what has not worked for you?
The Daily Hottentots 