The Art of Self Promotion…Online (1of 5)..

We’ve covered the types of social media available to us. We’ve covered the basic uses of these social media outlets. We will continue to revisit these avenues with current updates and ideas in this blog.

This week I want to talk about self promotion and social media.

I’ve come from a performer background and although self promotion come easily to most in my field, it didn’t to me. I was from the ilk ‘to tell people what you do and talk yourself up was uncool and made you sound desperate, therefore not very good!’ Oh how wrong could I have been! Since 2002 I have managed my own career and aided other artists in connecting with the right people and projecting the correct image. I finally got there!

I was chatting to a musician friend about self PR and he agreed with my saying it’s an attitude change and one that everyone can learn from, whatever their industry. Nowadays, you must take every opportunity to self promote. But, how you do that is very important.

The ‘sandwich board effect’ can work for some, but mainly its a no no.Would you honestly enjoy walking up and down a busy street with a heavy wooden A-board over your head telling people how good you are?

Social media enables us to be creative with our advertising. Subtle, ‘softly, softly catchy monkey’ or ‘in your face, BANG!’

First decide how you wish to grab the attention of your target market. Then make a list of their demographics. (What your target market mostly do, listen to, watch, their age, anything that could possibly be related to them.) From that list you can get a clearer picture on what to use and ideas on how to ‘hook them’ into your net!

Blogs are a great beginning and sometimes all you need.  A well written, active blog to carry our certain jobs for your business is a almost certainly must.

My musician friend, is an activist. His beliefs and campaigning have lead to many leads, yet he has no blog, nowhere where you can read about his background nor anything online to compliment his acts of passion. He also is a fabulous guitarist, therefore a teacher and has travelled the world with high profile acts such as Faithless and therefore has an elite life experience to share. I advised him firstly, to make bite size video clips of specific tutorials on the guitar and build up a loyal fan base of learners. You may argue, that there are many already doing this, but one thing I have learnt is ‘that is NEVER a reason to not do it yourself’. There is only ONE you!

Both writer and reader of said ‘blogs’ will benefit and in turn a loyal readership will begin and sharing your experiences, information and skills fulfil a purpose for the writer and connect you with people from you niche.

You get the picture?

#promotionideas #PR #SmallBiz #Twitter #Facebook #SocialMedia