Understanding how self-promotion impacts your career success

While we may not want to admit it, self-promotion, or telling your own personal brand story, is important to unlocking additional opportunities.

How important?

If you ask LinkedIn members, and I did, they'll tell you it's extremely important.

This is probably the most un-surprising poll result in the history of poll results. Asking LinkedIn members if self-promotion is important is like asking bees if they like honey, querying John Wick if he thinks guns are essential to his job, or polling my daughter on if she'd rather play Roblox or do math homework.

Let's go with the assumption that self-promotion is at least somewhat or extremely important. We're not talking about getting promoted here, but the general idea of self-promotion which could maybe get you to those job promotions as a result.

Here's a quick formula I knocked out to help you figure out how to approach self-promotion

? First, we can break down career self-promotion into two distinct types: Internal and External.

? Internal: The promotion we do within our current company...Reporting success with projects to stakeholders and the boss, internal networking, boosting visibility and the like.

? External: The promotion we do outside or current company, IE posting publicly and making external connections on LinkedIn, doing public speaking, being a thought leader, etc.

? Now, there's two types of self-promotion that occurs internally or externally: Intentional and unintentional.

? Intentional: This is where we actively seek out ways to promote ourselves.

? Unintentional: This is the kind of self-promotion that happens as a result of either luck, like your name gets attached to the success of your team regardless of your individual contribution, or somebody unprompted publicly recognizes or recommends you as a result of your work.

? Last, there's three types of people when it comes to career self-promotion: Active self-promoters, reluctant self-promoters and unengaged.

? Active: These are the ones who submit their work every chance they get to any internal updates or they're extremely active externally.

? Reluctant: Rather have the work speak for them and relies primarily on other's good word, but will self-promote at times out of necessity.

? Unengaged: Just don't care and can't be bothered to self-promote either because they're just not interested or don't feel they have to.

Work out where you fit in. For example, if I were to categorize myself using the above types, I'd say I'm primarily geared towards external self-promotion, I'm intentional about it, but I'm more reluctant when it comes to internal self promotion.

Spelling it out like that helps me to wrap my head around where I'm decent at self promotion and where I could use a little bit of work.

Take a minute to apply the above types to your idea of self-promotion and see what shakes out. If anything you might gain a little more insight into how you approach it. At worst I've only wasted about 2 minutes of your time, which all things considered in Social Media Internet Meme Land isn't that terrible of a bet.

Self-promotion or excessive bragging?

There's a fine line here. Cross that line and we start to venture into annoying, self-centered bragging that nobody likes to see. Fill up our LinkedIn feed talking about how great we are or how we're "changing the world" every other day gets old, fast. Then again, say nothing or rarely acknowledging wins or experience could really hold us back.

It's about how we communicate our achievements.

Chief Experience Officer of Breakout Consulting Asia Kevin Kan says, "As long as you talk factually, humbly & RESPECTFULLY about your achievements, it's not bragging . It's about visibility, career & personal brand management."

Being aggressive and relentless in self-promotion won't do you any good either. Engaging in others to embark on a pressure campaign in your favor will score you zero points. Excessively pinging people about your qualifications isn't being respectful or humble. That's called being annoying.

As I said, there's a fine line.

If you want to see people repeatedly and constantly crossing that line in the wrong direction, visit Reddit's r/ImTheMainCharacter . Prepare for the cringe. You've been warned.

Promote others as a means of self-promotion

Another wonderful strategy to balance self-promotion and keep from the wrong perception is to uplift and promote others without the expectation of gains for yourself.

U.S.-based Career Coach Jessica Sweet explains that self-promotion is extremely important but there's a difference between promoting and bragging. "It's not about constantly talking about yourself. But it is about putting yourself in the way of success consistently."

Colleague do great work? Shout it out to the team. Direct report knock it out of the park on a project? Make sure people know about it. A connection on LinkedIn do something inspiring and deserving of attention? Give kudos and share it.

Aside from the karmic factor here, recognizing others, particularly those on your team working on the same projects or those working under you will give the benefit by association. If you manage people you're supporting them and showing that you're a capable manager when talking about their wins as being THEIR wins. This is "putting yourself in the way of success" Jessica is talking about.

When you're on LinkedIn highlighting other's work or achievements, they're going to look at you in a different light and be more likely to return the favor when the time comes.

Spain-based Regional Vice President, Head of Midmarket Digital EMEAL North Kathleen Muller says, "Self-promotion, when designed for reasons beyond ourselves (ironically!) is a skill that helps to engage others in ways that aim to help them on their journey."

The long and short of it: The best and most effective self-promotion isn't always focusing on the "self" side of promotion.

The career-success machine needs feeding

Think about it this way, let's say you're the absolute best at your company for a specific task, but only you and your boss know it. It is one of those thankless jobs we all have to do sometimes, but THIS thankless job is something you're just really freaking great at.

You reach the point you're ready to find your new role so you start putting out the feelers and find that there's loads of people out there who are good at the same task you do, but they're just better at promoting themselves. You're at a disadvantage right out of the gate.

Arizona-based Job Search Consultant Emily Liou comments "...that you must establish your authority, credibility, and value because if you won’t, who will?"

Or as Senior Quality Engineer at Bosch Michael Mills puts it , "I once overheard these exact words in a hallway: 'I never knew that guy did anything around here until we laid him off.' That's a true story."

I've been waiting so very long to use that gif you have just no idea.

Effective self-promotion requires competence

Career Coach and regular-commenter-on-my-polls Sonal Bahl says self-promotion without having competence is like style without substance. "In order to be known for something, you’ve got to do the work and show up . Even when you don’t feel like it."

If you don’t, your self-promotion will likely damage rather than help your career.

The takeaway

• Figure out your formula find what works best for you and where you can improve.
• Self-promotion is important enough to where I spelled it out 24 times in this article alone. Recognize the importance, but remember balance and humility are key.
• Elevate others and it will reflect well on you.
• Walk the Line, but don't cross into bragging territory.
• Care about your work and be competent and you'll find more ways to self-promote

?? What's your take? What are the keys you've seen to leveraging self-promotion to the fullest in your or somebody else's career? ?? Top quality comments may be featured.