The Paradox of Self-promotion and How to Escape It!

Did you know that you can toot your own horn without automatically causing your audience to roll their eyes and scroll by your post? Yes, self-promotion and value can live in the same post in peace and perfect harmony.

To make this seemingly impossible feat a reality, you need to understand that, out of the two elements, value must be your first priority while ‘self-promotion’ — in its literal sense —takes a backseat.

Self Promotion: The Black Sheep of Social Media Marketing

The paradox is that self-promotion on social media is both, a necessity and a no-no. You see, the reason the term ‘self-promotion’ has such a bad rep is that it was a direct aftermath of traditional marketers trying to adopt social media into their marketing plans. They would use the techniques they used while making advertisements for conventional marketing media like newspapers, TV, and radio. And it made sense back when people wanted to know about your products in a straightforward manner.

The problem cropped up when the definition of the term didn’t evolve with the audience it catered to; while people slowly started to prefer personal connections and humanized versions of their favorite brands, companies unintentionally (or stubbornly) stuck to using self-promotion as a device for sales pitches.

_________________________________________________________________________

The Paradox of Self-promotion on Social Media

In his blog on Social Media Today, Matthew Peters perfectly explains “The Paradox of Self-promotion on Social Media”:

Social media generally frowns on self-promotion, in many cases admonishing outright those who practice it. But with the sheer numbers of new videos, posts, sites, pictures, and stories appearing each and every day, self-promotion is a necessity for anyone starting out and hoping to gain any sort of foothold.

In short, the paradox is that self-promotion on social media is both, a necessity and a no-no.

Even if you don’t talk about yourself constantly, self-promotion has been so overused that even the few times you do directly promote your brand; you will see an immediate backlash. So, even if you don’t talk about yourself constantly, self-promotion has been so overused that even the few times you do directly promote your brand; you will see an immediate backlash. This means that if you want to stick to having your social media promotion heavy, you will have to learn how to add value to your self-promotional posts.

How to Escape the Paradox

1. Spam and You’re Out

The Number 1 rule of social media is: “Give Spam, Get Banned.”

No one — and I mean no one — likes to see the same thing over and over and over again, especially if it is a clear sales pitch on social media. If you want to spread awareness about something, say an event you’re hosting, instead of putting up multiple posts about it, you could write a few articles or blogs related to the event and add some information about it in there.

While we’re on the topic about spam, let’s talk about private messages. Now, it is a great way to connect with your audience on a personal level but it can become an equally great way to annoy your audience… on a personal level. So here is a simple advice: Use private messages sparingly. It may sound counterproductive but it will actually help you. Overusing or abusing the private messages feature only results in your messages losing their charm.

If you use the private message feature to send your followers or potential followers lists of blogs or links, your audience will use their private message feature to mute, block, or worse, report you. Leave newsletter-type updates for newsletters and use private messages only for special instances like upcoming events; that way your messages will hold some meaning and increase the chances of your followers clicking on it rather than scroll by it.

2. Sell, But Subtly

If you’re a brand, you are going to sell, but don’t make it obvious. Okay, listen, your social media audience isn’t stupid; they know that, if you’re a brand, you are going to sell to them. They don’t mind that as long as you do it their way, which means — don’t make it obvious. Disguise your promotion with your opinions on relevant links you share, blend it into your blogs, alter the content in your posts to sound and look interesting or entertaining.

3. Give and You Shall Receive

The reason why self-promotion is frowned upon is that it makes you look self-absorbed. Well, that’s not entirely true. The fact is, constantly and exclusively promoting yourself makes you look self-absorbed. To get around this hitch, you will have to become a ‘real user’. What does that mean?

It means that you will have to do everything a real user of the platform does.

This includes, but is not limited to, sharing content created by your peers, lifting up other voices, and engaging with the community through replies and discussions. This will help break the illusion of vainness that is usually a byproduct of self-promotion.

4. Don’t Aim for Instant Virality

focus on giving your audience interesting, entertaining, and informative content that is relevant to them Rarely does it happen that a post goes viral as soon as it is published, and even if does, you need more than 15 minutes of fame to build a brand. So don’t hope for your notifications to blow up in the first go; in fact, don’t even aim for that. Instead, focus on giving your audience interesting, entertaining, and informative content that is relevant to them, regardless of whether it is your original content or content you share from others.

5. With a Little Help From Your Friends

Social media is nothing like print media or any other traditional marketing medium; you cannot get away with blatant and constant promotion, you cannot post something and leave your audience hanging in the comments sections, and you absolutely cannot survive without friends. In this context, ‘friends’ refers to the people you connect with without the intention of marketing to them.

The people you interact with during discussions, reach out to when sharing their original content, and meet in your comments sections when replying to them have higher chances of following you than the ones you market to directly. These are the followers who will make you a strong brand because they are here because your brand voice appealed to them, not because they like your sales pitch; these are the followers you are looking for.

6. Know Your Platforms

There are literally thousands of social media platforms in the world and not all of them will help you grow your brand. So you need to learn to pick your battles. Research on the best platforms for your brand, figure out the ones that can potentially fit in with your social media plan, go through their terms and conditions (no, really, go through them) and filter out unsuitable ones (that don’t allow original content or place too many restrictions on posting it).

You will also need to understand the unspoken rules of the platform and the community sentiment towards self-promotion and find out whether the platform and its community’s tone matched your brand voice. All this may sound like too much work — and it probably is — but in the long run, this research will save you from a lot of stress.

7. Find Your Golden Ratio

In the previous article, we looked at the various content ratios for social media, one of which was “the Golden Ratio”. In this ratio, you allot 30% for original content, 60% for curated content, and 10% for promotional content. But, if you want to focus on self-promotion, you need your own Golden Ratio. You will probably have to experiment a little before you find it, but make sure to find it; not only will it help you plan your content schedule, you will also not feel as overwhelmed about the notion of self-promotion.

8. Add Value to Your Self-promotion

The reason why self-promotion is so frowned upon on social media is because it is mostly pitch after pitch after pitch that push brands on absolutely uninterested audiences in the same old bland ways. But if you give your audience value along with your self-promotion, most of them will be much more tolerant (even receptive) of it. It might start off as a real task to frame your content to give your audience value and promote your brand, but once you get a hang of it, this skill will be a great boon for your brand. If you give your audience value along with your self-promotion, most of them will be much more tolerant of self-promotion.

In the end, it is important to remember that you are on social media to build your brand. So you need to be your number #1 fan and evangelist; you need self-promotion. But you also need to keep in mind that people don’t like to listen to brands broadcast about themselves all the time.

The only way out of this paradox is to find the right balance between value and promotion (mostly the balance is tipped towards value). This “value-added self-promotion” is a long, not-so-easy path, but it is a path towards success; you only have to learn how to tread it (which is a long process in itself).

Checkout my upcoming #Worshop on #SocialSelling https://bit.ly/GOLDWorkshop

Amit Jadhav