Self-promtion: Navigating the Lame (3 Part series)

LOOK AT ME!!! OVER HERE!!! I’m cool. Ummm, really – that’s lame. The fine line of self-promotion is a balancing act of being graceful or obnoxious. I’ll cover key points that I have learned the past few years and share my experiences with what worked and what didn’t, in this three part series.

Let’s get started.

Before I dive in, lets set the stage for what self-promotion is and what it’s all about. Self-promotion, is in many cases, advertising. Advertising in a indirect or direct manner that promotes the personality, services and identity of said business or individual. That’s straight out of the Gonzalez attic so don’t start posting comments about what wikipedia says. All in all, self-promotion is what the name states it is. Now that we have that clear, lets move on chappy….

The first step to self-promotion is – a self-evaluation. I cannot stress this point more. Like with building any super-fly house; you need a solid foundation. Knowing who you are is  key to your future success and failure.

You first need to evaluate the level of work that you are producing. How do you stack up against others in your field? Is your design work relevant? Do the images in your corporate brochures have people with 1980s hair styles? Check out some online galleries, website and inspirational blogs and see if your work is in the same league (or time era). Many designers might find out that they need to update some work in their portfolio or chose not to display; their once amazing project. Just like tight rolling your jeans or wearing z cavaricci’s, design goes out of style. This simple exercise will help you put your best foot forward and showcase your abilities in the best light.

What type of person are you? Are you a type-A, a to-cool-for-school type of dude, loud, or just sit back and chill type of person. Whatever you are (and there is no wrong type of personality here) you should always be true to that. Uuuuhhh but with one twist. You want to represent yourself the best you can, so why not represent yourself in the way you are on your best day. I’m not saying be fake. I’m saying be the best you can be. You might be a laid back kind of guy with a “whatever” attitude, but if you ever want to get clients and/or a job then you better tighten up that belt clean up a bit. You don’t want your online presence to come off as if you are lazy and unreliable, you want to come off as easy going and great to work with because you’re so dang cool. This goes back to that balancing act. Once you understand who you are as a person, you can better understand what to say and what not to say online. And believe me, search the web and you’ll see examples of both. Knowing who you are will help determine your “voice” and presence – the essences of your brand. In closing if your personality calls for you driving around nwi vlogging as you smoke a stogy then do it cause that is who you are, which makes your brand unique. If your personality isn’t that out going and you attempt to do something like that then it will feel wrong.

Self-promotion can take a lot or a little amount of time. In the beginning it will take a lot of time. You need to have a game plan and adapt as you go. Decide how you want to self-promote and what is the best way to reach your audience. Having a multi-tiered attack will make your efforts more effective. Promoting to peers/industry will look different then promoting for business. Peers don’t want to be sold to they just want to know what’s going on with you. If you are looking for business then that communication will be tailored to that audience. Once you have a game plan you can then see how that looks like in terms of time. For instance, if you have a twitter account you’ll need to factor in time for tweets through out your day, or schedule them. If you have a blog, then time for writing, posting and keep up-to-date with new content, (both of which I personally fail at). If you have a website, which you should, updating content could be done weekly or quarterly. All of these items take time. You have to schedule that into your day, make time to think about or actually do the work that is needed to keep up with your brand.

Self-promotion, once started, is a full-time job; how you work this job will in-turn reflect the outcomes that it generates for you. Being aware of this balancing act will separate you from the rest. It only takes a moment to fall off, but understanding the core principles will constantly keep you on the wire.

 

This entry was posted on Monday, November 29th, 2010 at 11:15 am and is filed under Learn. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.