Self promotion is always a bit tricky. Some brands — especially personal brands— feel a bit weird with shouting about their wins, exciting updates, promotions, awards, or growth. I get it. It feels like we are bragging on ourselves. Which as adults is something we tend to shy away from. But self promotion isn't bragging. In fact, it is an essential part of your brand growth because brand awareness doesn’t happen “typically” 100% organically. Word of mouth is a powerful tool, but you have to give people something to talk about and you have to lead the charge.

Bragging is sharing information about yourself to highten your standing in the eyes of others. It is that “Look at me! Look at me!” approach and typically is off putting. Honestly, it isn’t off putting because of you necessarily, but rather others don't like to feel less then. You showing off your new shiny things without a benefit to your audience just doesn’t work. BUT when you can connect how your brand growth, awards, or new shiny things helps them…now we are cooking with grease.

When do we promote ourselves?

Let’s first define promotion. Promotion is sharing your value, knowledge, presence, offers… with your desired audience. It is all the ways you connect your audience and your value… and remind them you are there to serve them. I think we have such a high threshold for promotion. It seems in our mind that only our really big achievements should be really promoted. Or only when something is finished can I start really talking about it. Or I’ll wait for someone else to promote me….wrong!!!

That is not their job. It is your job to share what amazing ways you are serving, growing, and being master problem solvers. It is amazing when someone shares about us, gives an unsolicited testimonial, or tells a friend about you… but that isn’t reliable. Only you are invested enough to promote your brand for the long term.

Your small bite size achievements, advancements, and updates are super helpful and easy for your brand audience to follow along with. Take them on the journey with you. Brand loyalty starts with trust. Social media is a powerful medium for promoting yourself and your brand through short reels, stories, and personal posts. Share your process, invite your audience into your world and through your wins, updates, education, and advancements build trust. Fostering your audience with small bite size info turns them into champions of your success.. supercharging your promotions.

If you were to promote that you just closed a 10k sale and talked about how amazing you are and how everyone should want to be you…that is bragging obviously and pretty ineffective. But if you were to share that a client invested in your brand today at a significant level and shared how you are going to SERVE them and HELP them with their problem…well that is useful self promotion. Someone reading it might have that same problem and you are proving a solution they may not have been aware of. Plus if you have been promoting your brand with small bite size promotions (just reminding your audience you exist and are working hard behind the scenes) they are more likely to already have established trust in you and aren’t hesitant to invest in you as well.

Always connect your self promotion to their problem. It is a winning combo.

This is a great example of using a polished image to share industry educational tips.

When do you need visual content to share about your self promotion?

You knew I was getting there. Visual content is like a good crock pot meal…. a little prep makes your life soooo much easier. Having the right kind of branding images sitting in a gallery waiting on you is better than you rushing around using sub par cell images that don't convey your value. Cell phone image aren’t bad, but they don’t always convey a polished look. Having graphics with polished images created and ready to go in Canva allows you to mix in BTS cell images with polished covers to really get your value across.

Trust in your brand also starts with your face! Yes….. people like to see who they are working with. So you have to show up.

I have a Refresh Branding session that is perfect for those once a year or even semi annual shoots to keep your evergreen visual content library engaging and fresh. An evergreen library should grow and have a long shelf life. This library gives you content to continue to pull from and has a cohesive look.

The other way brands use the refresh session is when they have a specific launch, product, or message to convey. For example, do you have content for when you reach 10,000 followers, or for the new book you are about to publish? How are you planning to promote that you hired a new staff member who will be solving all sorts of problems for your audience? What about that new staging service you are now offering…

How is your audience going to learn about what you are doing if you are not promoting it with great written and visual promotions? Those promotions can be through simple stories, posts, ads, email newsletters, or print mailers. Your audience (well all audiences) are kind of dense. As an audience we are pretty passive and live in our on worlds. So you as the brand have to pour it on a lot to get our attention. I can’t tell you how often I hear from a brand who has an event, promotion, etc and thinks they promoted the heck out of it, only to hear afterwards from someone that they had no idea it was happening.

We don’t want to shout noise— we want to elevate the volume of our message over the mindless scrolling that happens on social media. We want to make irresistible emails that are impossible not to click on. And when our audience gets to us— we want them to stay. We want them to engage and be excited how we can help them as an expert in XYZ industry.

I want you to think about a brand you love and how important their “look” is to your trust in their value and trust in their content and knowledge. Brands spend tons of money on making their storefronts appealing so they can elevate their value. They create displays, stunning windows, and whole marketing campaigns to attract your trust… and money. Your branding images can do the same for you. It gives you polished content to pair with your self promotions (behind the scenes, reels, educational posts, offers, etc.)

Think of self promotion as a way to promote a solution to someones problem— not just to boost you. I think that makes it so much easier to promote all of the amazing things happening in our brands.

Learn more about my branding sessions and how I can help support your growth!