Promoting Yourself is Not Being Cocky

It’s a wonderful feeling when a brand receives a boost in exposure. If you can be featured in a publication or interviewed on a popular podcast, you’re  getting in front of a new group of people. The results give you more website traffic, added subscriptions to your email list, more phone calls, and more sales. There’s a period right after you get featured when people start noticing you. It’s exciting. You’re finally getting the attention you deserve and worked hard for. Then a few days go by and people move on to something else. What can you do once the honeymoon phase of exposure wears off? It happens fast! There are ways you can keep that excitement alive over the following weeks, months, and years to leverage those  past opportunities. 

Once you have exposure, you want it to be seen more than once and shared repeatedly. This is where most brands mess up. They get the recognition but never leverage it. They never promote it after the fact, and it sits in the pit of misery never to be seen again. Let’s say you receive an article written about you in a popular magazine. That popular magazine boasts 250,000 monthly readers, of which a large portion see your story. This is wonderful. But then what? The magazine doesn’t promote your story the following month since they need to get eyeballs on their new content. So, you must take control and market this story  yourself. Wait for them and it may never happen again. All too often, amazing stories are produced and the producer of the content promotes the story once and  then it never is marketed again. 

As you grow your brand, the goal is that your network is growing with it.  Imagine gaining 100 new followers a month. At the end of the year you would  have 1,200 new followers. If you promoted that content in January and only in January, 1,100 new followers would miss out. Do you get why recycling your content is important now? Since it takes six times for someone to be seen the first  time anyway, get it out of your head that everyone who is following you always sees  what you’re producing.  

Becoming an anomaly means you’re seen a lot. So much so that your brand is  recognizable, and you begin to hear people say, “We see you everywhere. How do you do that?”  

We have 24 hours in a day, and what you do with it sets you apart.  Anomalies don’t waste time or complain, they are focus-driven and maximize their time. Instead of having a series of one-on-one meetings where you only get your message out to the person or small group, think about taking that exact same content and create it using a medium in which you can share it with everyone, like a video or podcast. Besides reaching numerous people at once, if those people feel you have provided them value, then they now have an easy way  to share that content.  

A 1,000-subscriber email list that has an open rate of 25 percent is missing 75 percent of its subscribers. You must continue to promote and leverage your wins no matter how old they are. The content inside of them may no longer be relevant  but that doesn’t matter. What does matter is leveraging your brand, leveraging the platform of that popular magazine by saying, “Featured in Popular Magazine” in your messaging. This is what sports teams do. They promote when they won, not  when they lost. When was the last time you heard the Tampa Bay Buccaneers talk about the year they lost almost every game? You don’t. You hear them promote when they won the Super Bowl. Even if it was decades ago, it shows that they’re champions. What big wins do you already have? What brands have already  mentioned you, or what companies have you worked with that are recognizable?  Create a list of these moments and continue to leverage them and promote that  you’re associated with them.  

To be an anomaly, learn to get comfortable praising your accolades. It’s a tough  pill to swallow, but there are ways to promote yourself without being cocky or blatantly promoting how awesome you are. If you’re unwilling to share your wins with the world, it’s a tough road to becoming an anomaly.  

You have a series of events, accomplishments, and milestone moments in your life that have made you proud. These moments make you unique and special and are usually tied to an experience or big brand that the world knows. 

Let’s say you have been coaching football as an assistant coach for 26 years.  That hard work finally pays off and you become the head coach. Now which sounds better on your resume: one year of head coaching experience or 26 years of coaching experience? Obviously that year of head coaching experience means a lot, however having over two decades of experience sounds a lot better. Additionally, if you have worked under anyone that has some clout, use their name as much as possible. Maybe you were coached under Hall of Fame Washington Redskins Coach Joe  Gibbs. You can leverage the team’s name and brand. Putting this all together, you  have a 26-year coaching career and come from the Joe Gibbs coaching pedigree,  which has three Super Bowl wins. Now you see how positioning your credibility into one that shows where you were groomed makes you look a heck of a lot more  capable than a first-year head coach? 

Maybe you have spent the last decade jumping from one job to another, and you’re afraid that that will make your commitment to a new company questionable. There are ways to position yourself to make you look like a seasoned veteran, rather  than someone with a short attention span. Leverage your school, especially if they have a big name or have big-name alumni. You graduated from an educational  juggernaut which led you to a decade’s worth of work with some of the top brands in hotel management like Hilton, Best Western, and MGM Grand. (Note: Never, ever lie on your resume because that is just setting you up for failure.) 

In addition to your resume, look at the companies you have worked for. What big wins did they have that you had direct ties to? If you were in a department that won a credible award, don’t you want to flaunt it and share its worth? Not everything ties directly to your past and that’s okay. But if you have accolades showing how amazing you are, then you need to tell the world. Let’s say there’s a female soccer player from the University of Southern  California that was on the 2016 National Championship winning team but is now a doctor at Cleveland Clinic. Even though the championship win is long over, it would be foolish for her not to use that to her advantage in promoting herself from a business standpoint. She’s an anomaly because she was a part of something that very few ever are. Even though she’s now in a totally different field, she will always be a champion. Take a step back and look at your life as an outsider. Tell your story!  It’s a good one. 

Lewis Howes, a popular podcaster, leveraged his professional career in football as a stepping stone when he first started in business. While his career was cut short due to a freak accident, he knew that he had unique life experience that would set him apart. Instead of forgetting his past, he used it to get in front of people with whom he wanted to be associated. A few years later, Howes is a best-selling author surrounded by some of the top businesses and brands in the world. He took his unique situation and turned it into an anomaly of a career. In addition to being a professional athlete, Howes can also promote himself as a best-selling author and popular podcaster with his podcast The School of Greatness. 

It’s all about credibility. When someone first “meets” a person, it’s human nature to question them and ask why they should trust that person or care what they have to say. Your goal is to position yourself as someone who has credibility by leveraging your accolades, milestones, and endorsements. You do that and people will listen. You’ll become an anomaly.

Implementation Time:

1. What big wins and milestones have you achieved over your lifespan?

2. What brands have you worked with? 

3. What do you want people to think you do, or how can you help them?  What keywords and phrases are associated with these?