Shameless Self-promotion – Good or Bad?

Egos. Self promotion. Social media. Is self-promotion critical in today’s world—especially on social media? Should you be self-promoting to get ahead, to get better recognized, to hopefully get better leads and close more deals? Of should you be humble? In recent weeks, I have had this discussion with several people. Some are peers and colleagues, but several are clients. Through our mentoring and advisory services, we often work with clients (individuals and organizations) to help them build their brands and profiles. Here are some insights into this question of shameless self-promotion.?

Social media has provided a platform for us to promote whatever we want, whenever we want. It allows us to share content. It offers an opportunity to tell people about things we want them to know. And there are more platforms than just social media to do this. The following tips and experiences look at a cross-section of platforms from several different contributors.

• ?First and foremost, everyone agreed that you need a happy balance between being humble and self-promoting. Some do it well—others do not.
• Everyone concurred that it is far better to have others talk positively about you than for you to talk about yourself. This means you should have others promote you rather than promote yourself. It means if you are a brand, have your property talk about you in a positive light and vice versa. If it is you the individual, have others post about your achievements or successes rather than doing it yourself. (All agreed that promotion about you by your staff, a subordinate, spouse, or parent is like you doing it yourself. It is truly questionable. All these people can share and comment, but they cannot initiate the post and it is best if they just share and/or “like” versus going into a diatribe about how great you are!)
• The best way to promote yourself is to promote others! Tell the stories of others versus your own story. You can integrate something about you in it as well (more to follow below).
• If you are promoting someone else like a sponsor of yours, then mention how proud you are as an organization to have them as a sponsor. Maybe the post is about them receiving an award or some breakthrough technology they developed. But the lead must be about them with minimal mention of you and your relationship. (As we have done in this TMC and often do. You are receiving free content that we hope you find of value and can put into practice. We also plug ourselves and our services. The second last sentence of the first paragraph talks about us and how we do this work, but hopefully, it is not the focal point of the article, and we do not believe it is—other than I just brought it to your attention!)
• A couple of folks noted how one sponsorship naming rights sales agency (Judy Haber at Performance Sponsorship Group) plugs and promotes on social media all the deals she does. She focuses on the municipality and the headline in her posts, which are about the municipality, not her or her company. Then in the online article, she will note that she and her company did this work. In my world (and those I spoke with), this is the way to do it. Talk about the client or partner and then mention yourself in a low-key manner. Likewise, Brian Levine and his company Envision Sports and Entertainment and Russel Reimer at Manifesto Sport Management tell the story of their athlete and then mention they represent that athlete. It is interesting to note that, as both of these organizations have reached a point in maturity of their business, many times they do not even mention they represent the athlete. They devote the whole post/story to their client. As an organization, we make a point of never mentioning ourselves when we post, share, or write about a client, and we never have in 20 years. (Some say we go too far in that direction, but that is a choice we have made.)
• Ironically, four of the people I connected with in preparing this TMC mentioned an organization/people that do the opposite. Perhaps it is that they and their businesses are new and they are not as savvy in branding. They are a husband and wife team with a great staff complement and terrific product. But when you look at their social media posts, none are about their clients. They constantly post about themselves. One will post how the other spoke here or there, or will share about the other with huge accolades for his or her achievements. Most of the likes and comments are from staff, family, and non-business related people as far as any of us can tell.

?They post constantly about every new client they sign. But the story is about them signing the client, not about the client. One person mentioned in our discussion that she has never seen a post about one of their clients as the topic and how that client was successful because of their product. Never did that occur, let alone with specific examples. Never a post about the ROI their clients are receiving as a result, such as ABC client saw a 30% increase in traffic to their website, 40% growth in sales over the same period last year, or even a quote from a client saying how satisfied they are with the product. One person I chatted with did an analysis. We were wrong! Not every article was about the two of them or their company. There were a few that focused on the client, but the data showed that 93% of all their posts were about them and not the clients. This turns off rather than engages your followers. Funny, I had tuned out of their posts about six months ago and the other four who addressed them have all done the same. Some even stopped following altogether.

?So, here is the long and short of it. It is important to promote yourself. But either promote others and casually mention yourself or have others promote you. When you are the only one posting and sharing about you, you quickly lose audience and credibility.