If you’re looking for ways to overcome your embarrassment and self-promote without shame, you’re in the wrong place.
There’s plenty of that all over the internet. I’m taking a different approach.
I’m coming across more and more self-employed people who feel they are at odds with traditional ideas of promotion for their business, and I’m one of them.
I hear the words “you’ve got to promote yourself” often, everywhere – and to this day it still makes me squirm.
I have clients, friends and contacts who feel the same way – and it’s not just women. I am meeting plenty of men who find self-promotion leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
I remember telling the friend and businesswoman who would become my mentor many years ago I couldn’t go networking because “I couldn’t sell myself”. She explained how it wasn’t about that – it was about creating and investing in relationships.
It was that realisation that made me realise I could run my own business – and that night, over a curry in York, Flaming Nibs was conceived. And to this day I’m building that business successfully without much self-promotion at all – I don’t cold call, I don’t shout about what I do and I don’t put down my competitors.
What I do is value my business and my skills, use those skills to try and solve people’s problems and stay loyal to the ideas and people I value.
Interestingly, it’s this kind of thing Copyblogger calls self-promotion. The other, shouty stuff, they refer to as ‘self-adulation’.
Which brings me to the issue – there’s a need out there for a different kind of marketing, that goes further than abandoning the ‘push’ stuff and taking your marketing inbound. And there’s a need for a different kind of language about it, too – is this really self-promotion, or something else?
At the moment I’m calling it ‘humble marketing’ and it’s an idea I’ll exploring further on this blog. Comments welcome; there’s a box below just waiting for your insight – you know what to do.
Posted in Humble Marketing
2 Responses to Does self-promotion make you squirm?
Alistair Manning says:
March 19, 2012 at 9:48 pm
Great post Sally. As you know, I don’t cold-call or advertise either; I’d be rubbish at it! Instead, I try to ‘attract’ business by offering value, through writing, speaking, testimonials, advice, articles, etc I’m uncomfortable with ‘self-adulation’ but I do think you need to be confident in your value proposition. If you don’t blow your own horn, there is no music!
sally says:
March 20, 2012 at 1:23 pm
Thanks for the comment Alistair,
Yes, there’s a middle ground always – and I think confidence is at the heart of humble marketing.
It seems to me that if you’re truly confident in what you do (a holy grail for many) then you don’t need a hard sell – that confidence naturally attracts.
Sally