Most people don’t like to brag, but when you’re running a business you have to promote yourself often and there’s often no way around it.
If you don’t share what you’re doing with others and provide a call to action, you probably won’t make much money.
Getting referrals is one of the best ways to grow your business, but if you don’t speak up about your skills and past successes, no one will know about it or have you on the top of their mental list when they need to refer someone.
This is why promoting yourself is so crucial. I’ll admit, as a shy person and introverted person myself, it feels weird to always talk about myself and what I’m doing.
I don’t want people to get annoyed by me or think I’m bragging and just trying to make myself look better than other people.
If you have a similar stance, here are a few ways to shamelessly promote yourself to grow your business even if you’re not a fan of self-promotion.
1. Focus on Solving a Problem
If you are providing a valuable service that helps people solve a problem, you shouldn’t have to feel bad about self-promotion because you’re helping people.
Try asking your audience or target market questions about their biggest struggles, then share your solutions with them. This may be a course you have, a specific page on your website, or a service package you have.
Solving problems should always be your main focus. When you stay authentic, people can see that you’re not just trying to brag and get them to buy something from you.
2. Schedule Social Media Updates
Leveraging social media for self-promotion is so easy these days. You can re-share blog posts on your social channels and schedule updates to go live throughout the week so you don’t have to focus so heavily on promoting yourself and your business every single day.
With social media, remember that it’s social. People want to see more than the latest updates on your business on your social channels.
Try mixing it up and sharing a combination of other people’s content, interesting quotes, and fun posts too to keep your audience engaged so they can feel like they know the real you.
3. Share Real Stories of Overcoming Common Struggles to Engage Your Audience
Don’t forget to be raw and real when promoting yourself. Sometimes, this can mean sharing the not-so-glamorous aspects of your journey or a client success story that starts with humble beginnings.
People love to hear success stories about someone who started from the bottom because it’s so relatable so whether it’s a case study, personal journey, or a huge project you’re just completed, be sure to tell people all about the obstacles you had to overcome and how you turned things around then add your call to action at the end.
For example, a fitness coach might share that they once struggled with weight loss and eating healthy instead of just telling other people that they should schedule a consultation with them to develop a plan to start improving their health.
Telling people just the good parts of the story definitely won’t seem real and can even seem like you are trying to paint yourself in a perfect light.
Sharing a real life example of how your products or services can help people overcome their biggest obstacles will actually motivate them to want to work with you and you’ll get some shameless promotion.
4. Partner with Others
If you don’t feel comfortable with promoting yourself all the time, try establishing partnerships with others so they can promote you instead.
Maybe you want to support an important cause and sponsor an event. Perhaps you want to team up with someone else in your niche and host a webinar. Maybe you’re co-authoring an e-book. Regardless of what it is, partnering with other people means more promotion for everyone involved and you’ll tend to talk more about the project itself as opposed to just yourself and your business.
Summary: Self-Promote at Your Own Pace
You don’t have to market yourself non-stop if you don’t feel comfortable or feel like your audience may not be responding well to your efforts. Sometimes less is more but don’t completely halt your efforts.
Continue to send out your newsletter, put up ads, network, and promote on social media, but try to utilize a variety of different promotion techniques as mentioned above only do things that make you feel comfortable. It’s important to stay true to yourself because your customers and clients will respect that and see right through anything else. You’ll also feel better about self-promotion as a result.
