I had dinner last night with Frank Reed, whose writing graces this page each Friday. Somehow the conversation got around to self-promotion, a dirty little hyphenated word that no one really wants to admit to, but that we all must do to be successful. Frank and I admitted to each other that neither of us is very good at self-promotion, being old enough to have been profoundly uncomfortable with our various pre-Internet forms of self-promotion. (Many of us even refer to those who are good at it as “shameless” self-promoters.) But in thinking about our conversation, I think that both Frank and I are actually good at Internet-style self-promotion, because it stems from helping other people.
I told Frank the story of how I became a Distinguished Engineer at IBM, a situation that required self-promotion if ever there was one. When I first became aware of such a position, I (perhaps grandiosely) thought that I was qualified for the position in every way, but I had one impediment. I needed to collect letters of reference from other Distinguished Engineers. There was just one problem: I didn’t know any.
I was advised to just start calling a few up and ask them to write a letter for me. This struck me as incredibly awkward, and not at all the kind of self-promotion I am good at. So, I chose another, more Internet-age appropriate method, sending helpful e-mails to Distinguished Engineers when I came across information they would be interested in. And to ensure that I had such information, I set up elaborate Google Alerts for each of my targets.
It worked like a charm. Soon, I had no shortage of Distinguished Engineers who knew who I was, thought I was on the ball, helpful, and were now willing to vouch for me. Last night I realized that this is exactly what we must do on the Internet.
Image by Gary Hayes via Flickr
Self-promotion must take the form of helping others first to be effective on the Internet. Someone who approaches me listing off credentials and ending with a request for a relevant job opportunity might succeed, but someone who helps me out a few times is guaranteed to get my attention in a job hunt. Similarly, on the Internet, putting out helpful information is what stamps you as an expert.
And the good new is that it isn’t uncomfortable. I make sure this blog has a post in it each day, for example, and I think this information helps those who read it. When people contact me telling me they have been reading my blog and now, “Could you do some consulting?” or “I have a speaking event that you’d be perfect for,” that is the result of successful self-promotion, but a kind that has done nothing but help people all around.
Self-promotion has a bad connotation, but perhaps the Internet will turn it around. If you focus on helping others, what you do will rarely feel uncomfortable and it will probably work better than anything else. Helping is the new selling.
