I liked Seth Godin's post today on Blogs and self promotion as it clears up a question I've had - what's more effective..self promotion or having others promote you? Seth Godin provides a convincing argument of having one's work and name promoted by other bloggers is much more effective to sell works than an author (or artist) promoting themselves. It's also possible to pull in Viral Marketing and apply it to Seth Godin's post about Blogs and self promotion:
"...Clearly, just about everyone who reads my blog enjoys my writing. You'd think that a significant percentage would then hustle over to buy a copy on Amazon the moment they heard about it. But, just as Oprah is at her best when she's talking about somebody else's book, something funny happens when a blogger talks about his work.
Cory and Mark both have terrific books out. And as co-editors on the world's most popular blog, you'd think that they could use boingboing to sell a ton of books. But it doesn't happen. Lucky for bloggers, if you write a good book, a few other bloggers will write about you and then the sales start happening.
That example came to mind today when a friend of mine told me her work was being promoted on a French Blog and I wrote about it in Amy Crehore Slide show by a French Fan. I looked at the slide show and decided I liked it enough and put it on my own Art Blog .... I imagine other people might do the same thing ... Fans.
But here's the thing - I think having Fans is a sign of success - some people think you can manufacture Fandom, but I don't think you can, at least, not that effectively.
When you have people, spontaneously, often unconnected, talking about work they admire, that's genuine - it's a sign of quality....and i think, that kind of Fandom and Emulation does more to boost one's reputation, one's trust, than anything else.
Now, can that lift to one's reputation be measured? Absolutely, it's doable. Fandom is measurable and one way to measure success, is to observe what happens as a result of having fans vs. were none to exist. What happens as a result of having a Slide Video Show embedded in several blogs vs. not having it?
Except marketers forget to tell the common person in order to begin that promotion they must promote themselves first. I, Ida Byrd-Hill, realized a good financial advisor is 20% a financial expert and 80% sales/ marketing/promotion. Most people hate shameless promotion. Try a ancient promotion method- Advocacy. She built her financial practice with advocacy promotion. She is on her next quest to market her book, Breakin' Out of Your Financial Funk! with the same advocacy promotion.
Advocacy promotion is advocating relentlessly for a social cause. People align with your cause, get to know you and then purchase from you.
Her cause is excellent public education in Detroit. This cause has landed her on radio and TV news shows, front pages of newspapers even in the Major regional Business Publication. In order to truly break out of one's funk, an individual must know themselves and what high demand skills they have at their disposal which aligns with her book nicely.
She can be reached at 313-483-2126 Eastern Standard Time.
Posted by: Ida Byrd-hill | July 1, 2008 10:29 AM | Permalink to Comment