Do you believe that you don’t need to talk about yourself if you are good at what you do? Or, shall we call it as a ‘myth’?
Over the years I have met people who absolutely believe that the only people who promote themselves and talk about their skills and craft are those who are not good at it. Have you met people like that? Do you believe in that theory?
There Are Stories To Back Up The Claim
My friends who believe that you should not promote yourself have examples of people who never promoted themselves. But they became world famous because of their actions alone. People such as Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi, and many more.
If you pay attention, you will find people, some famous ones (in every country, in every culture) who never promoted themselves, but achieved a tremendous amount of success because they were so good at what they did.
What About Those Who Died In Silence?
However, if you flip the coin, you will find many more people with incredible talent, God-given abilities and exceptional skills who received no attention. They achieved no success and lived an average life because they chose not to self promote.
I am sure you know many such people. I have a handful of them, living and dead, who could not achieve any significance in their lives because they failed to learn and leverage the art of self-promotion.
Self-Promotion Is Important — Why Leave It To Chance?
Yes, you may succeed and become famous without promoting yourself. Yes, it is possible.
But, you have far greater chances of success if you combine a smart promotion strategy along with your skills. Your craft has a greater chance to gain momentum if you employ the art of promotion into your marketing strategy.
Do you really believe that the iPhone is the best phone available? Do you think that Apple would have achieved this level of success without the incredible marketing skills of Steve Jobs? Do you think iPhones would have sold themselves?
I think a great product or a great service needs a great promotion for it to reach its target market. Your skills and your craft also needs a marketing strategy, especially in today’s market.
The Right And Wrong Way
Speaking of self-promotion, it is really a fine art. If you do not practice caution while doing self-promotion, you may turn people off and damage relationships.
Derek Halpern, the founder of social triggers shares some awesome insights into the art of self-promotion. In this post he shares how to brag about yourself without turning people off.
If you watch this video from Derek, in just five minutes you will learn both the right way and the wrong way to do self promotion. Here you go:
In fact, Derek is big on self-promotion. If you visit his website, you will have pop-ups right away asking you to sign up for his newsletter. In almost every post, he asks you to share his articles on your social media channels. He never misses an opportunity to promote himself.
However, his popularity has only increased over time. His subscriber base keeps growing. I love going back to his website every time he publishes something new.
I also think that I would have never come across his name if he did not promote himself on Facebook and on Google.
I think that self-promotion can hear it tremendous results if done right whether or not you have exceptional skills. But if you do have a genius within you, imagine the power.
What Do You Think? Is Self-Promotion Important?
What do you think? Do you agree that self-promotion is not a bad idea? What do you think is the right balance of self-promotion and skills?
Please share your thoughts in the comments as I look forward to learning from you. Thank you kindly!
Hello Kumar,
Lying is the only issue in self promotion. But I am confident that self promotion is fine when you know what you do, when you add value to others, When you value others (people who are not gifted or talented like you), if you trust yourself , You love what you do and the way you do it.Above all, Self promotion, should follow God promotion. Without His presence and guidance, there is a vain in a self promotion.
To be specic, If for instance I say that I want to influence people in something Good……..then self promotion is really great!!!But If you aim to ignore, bend, bloc, stop, discourage people’s ideas.then no need to promote yourself.
I am not quite sure if others will be on my position, but I stand firm in positive self promotion (Not sure if the positive self promotion exist).
Blessings,
Charmant
Hi Charmant,
I get your point. Basically, self-promotion for wrong reasons is what you are against and I am sure we all hate when people do that.
Self-promotion with a lie is bad and unethical I believe. When we live with integrity in our own character, we don’t need to worry about anything else because we are in alignment with God.
Thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts!
Regards,
Kumar
Hi Kumar,
I’ve seen this video before 🙂 It’s true, no one else will promote you, especially if you don’t believe in yourself.
The negative connotation to the word brag has EGO written all over it. However, in a healthy way, we need to believe in ourselves enough to be willing to do brag. Derek Halpern is right. It is all about timing and context.
Kind Regards,
Bill
Hi Bill,
You are right! The word brag is generally taken in a negative sense without any consideration to the context.
And, if we don’t promote ourselves, who will and why should they?
Thank you for dropping by and adding value!
Regards,
Kumar
Hey Kumar
I think like many people I also don’t promote myself at all.
I have also heard that before, that I need to get out and do it, but I guess my natural inclination to not do it, gets in the way.
Time to change it!
Not sure how yet, but I will manage somehow :>
thanks for the reminder
ashley
Hi Ashley!
I think you have done a great job lately of promoting your services and I wouldn’t underestimate your ability to do a good job of self promotion 🙂
I am glad you enjoyed the reminder 🙂
Regards,
Kumar
Ashley: When you comment on other people’s blogs, you’re promoting yourself 😉 Every single word and action of yours promote you. Directly or indirectly. In a wrong or a right way (that depends on what you do).
Kumar: The static image that’s shown before the video starts reminds me of one of your articles. The one where I commented about your moustache. Now you’re posting the image of a guy wearing a dollar sign necklace – quite a change in your approach! 😉 [That image may not be relevant to the real Derek. But people who don’t know him cannot know it.] Hehe…
Hi Kumar!
Loved that video you have given us here. Self promotion is a must. But there has to be a cleaver way to do so. If we are sharing something we have done, it has to be geared at others. As long as we keep our ego where it belongs -AWAY- then we can promote ourselves in an ethical way.
There has to be balance too. We cannot bombard people with self promotion. I find it more effective when someone is asking a question and I can provide an answer. Then I get “you do that?” And there we go!
There is nothing worse than seeing people blast themselves and their over-sized checks online. It just doesn’t impress me at all. I just had a talk with a blogging friend about this. She said that so many people ask her what she does. She wrote a wonderful blog post telling a story about how she recruited so many people in such a short time. Now this is the kind of self promotion that is reader friendly.
Thanks for another fantastic post!
-Donna
Hi Donna,
I was out of town last while week traveling on business (and a little pleasure too) and didn’t get a chance to read Barbara’s post yet. But I will read her story which surely is fascinating.
If somebody is succeeding at something, it is wise to learn from them and see how we can leverage that technique to grow our businesses, right?
And yes, when people start bragging about their success (whether asked or not) and start sharing their checks on social media, it does get a but annoying 🙂
Thanks for sharing your views and adding value.
Regards,
Kumar
Great Post Kumar. I couldn’t agree more than self promotion is both important and must be done with skill and tact. There are certainly many great talents that will forever remain undiscovered because they were not promoted, or the person with the talent was shy or did not know how to self promote.
I have had people ask me how I area my business so fast and my answer is always the same: I never miss an opportunity to promote myself or my business. I do not believe I am the smartest, strongest, best looking, etc. I am good at what I do but there are people who are better and know more. The difference is that I believe in myself, I stay positive, and I self promote. Also, I self promote in ways that avoid bragging and artificial hype. In fact when I promote myself and my business it is usually in the form of helping others so they see the value in what I have without having to say it at all.
The video was a nice addition to this post. Have a great weekend Kumar.
Adam
I’ve been tracking Derek for quite awhile now and I’ve seen this video before. This is a great reminder video on how to avoid being too self promotional in the wrong way!
I’m glad I noticed your comment Kumar on Rebekah’s blog and I’m even more glad I clicked through to find your blog so I could subscribe to your list and add you your RSS to my Feedly reader.
Well I believe self promotion is important but we have to do it to some extent or rather it would end with other things.
The video you’ve shared is really awesome and points are useful too.
Thanks for sharing.
Hi Kumar!
I landed upon here from Adrienne’s blog. I have seen you there a many times before and thought of dropping by.
I liked the video but I think I am far from achieving that. The phrase, “blowing one’s own trumpet” has always been a kind of a social stigma. You are looked down upon and often called a snob if you brag too much about yourself. So naturally, we all have grown up to believe that self-promotion = self pride = stereotyping by the society.
But now after reading your post, I am beginning to feel that self-promotion is not that bad after all. I mean, at least it won’t bring harm to the people around me. If its bad for myself then I would rather choose to take a chance if it can get me to my ultimate success. So yeah, time to change my attitude and open up a bit.
Hi Tiaraa,
Thank you for dropping by to share your thoughts.
There definitely is a fine line between “bragging so much to be hated” and “bragging just write for the right reasons”. And you are right, most of us are very cautious when it comes to self promotion and that sometimes hurts.
Hope you are having a great long weekend and I look forward to getting to know you more.
Regards,
Kumar
Another great share Kumar!
Oh yeah, you have to promote yourself because just like you said, had Derek not promoted himself on Facebook you wouldn’t have found him. As he said in his video, there is a right way and a wrong way to go about it but having a call to action at the end of each post asking them to share your content to me is fine. If they think it was worth sharing they will. If they don’t they won’t so it’s not like you’re in their face about it.
I think that if you are arrogant about it then most people are going to see you as someone who is only here for themselves and they won’t pay much attention to you anyway.
We have to get ourselves out in front of enough people. Sharing your knowledge with others I think is a must, doing it with tact is crucial.
Yep, promote yourself and then others will start helping you with that so that you don’t have to do it often. You just can’t beat that now.
Thanks for the share Kumar and Happy 4th of July.
~Adrienne
Happy 4th of July Adrienne! I had a great time yesterday with kids and ended up watching the fireworks which was phenomenal!
I was going through the Declaration of Independence on more time yesterday and I was amazed one more time by the simplicity which created a great nation with founding principle that all men are created equal with unalienable rights of Life, Liberty and pursuit of happiness!
Anyways, I am glad that you enjoyed the idea of self-promotion as well and that you do give a fair consideration to this aspect in your marketing as well.
I was afraid to self promote for a while. But then, I am a keen observer when it comes to marketing and I slowly started to duplicate what leaders were doing and eventually became comfortable to promote myself and my services wherever appropriate.
Thank you for dropping by and adding value. You have a great rest of the weekend.
Regards,
Kumar
Hi Kumar,
You have brought an amazing point to think upon. At many platforms self promotion is important and really do favor that we are attracted to the thing which is the result of promotion.
You have taken an excellent example of iPhone. We all love it, it’s not because it has great quality feature only, we hear it from many others that Apple is awesome and somehow our mind has caught it from the gossips.
Great post.
Have a great weekend.:)
~Ravi
Hi Ravi,
Thank you for dropping by and also sharing this with your network.
Steve Jobs was an exemplary marketer and iPhone’s popularity was also because of the marketing strategies and promotional style of Jobs. Think about it – didn’t we think of Steve Jobs the moment he thought of iPhones? That was the brand Steve Jobs which still is although he is no more!
Self-promotion in right quantity is critical to entrepreneurs or freelancers. Companies promote themselves and therefore, if you are running a business as a solo entrepreneur, you have to promote your self just like companies do. Otherwise, how will the market know, right?
You have a great week into my friend!
Regards,
Kumar
Oh for sure. I do believe we must promote ourselves and pat ourselves on the back. If not us then who?
Yeah of course self promotion should be done. If not no one will do for us. I guess you have shared a unique post for self promotion of individual amazing skills.
Thanks
Enjoyed the read Kumar.
I agree you do need to promote yourself, as you can’t count on others doing it for you. Well, as you mentioned, except for the rare examples. Just like SEO, you need to do the work, they don’t just hand out ranks for free.
I do promote myself, but I’ve never been comfortable calling myself an expert of anything along those lines. Maybe it’s just me, but I cringe when people call THEMSELVES experts. Not like some one else writes their twitter bio’s or blog bio’s. Always been kind of a turn off for me when people claim things like that about themselves. But seems thats what it takes? Or it’s just me 🙂
Hi Ron,
You are right! Calling expert is sometimes not seen very positively. But the problem is, how will your first time visitor of your website will ever know that you are an expert if you don’t give them any clue about your expertise?
Calling yourself an expert becomes ridiculous when you really lie about it and you really are not an expert on that particular subject.
We need to be sensible and honest. Bragging rightfully is not such a bad thing 🙂