Embracing The Online Wild West: Self Promotion in The Social Media Age

If you’re new to the world of social media self promotion then putting yourself out there can feel like an incredibly daunting task. What are the rules? How do you find success? Is it worth investing all your time and energy when there’s no guarantee?

Social media has been an integral part of our culture for over a decade now but in many regards it’s still something of a wild west. In this article, we’d like to explore how you can use social media to your advantage, the common pitfalls to look out for, and why it’s better to embrace a ‘no rules, just guidelines’ approach to putting yourself out there.

A Wild West Mentality

Self promotion – and marketing in general for that matter – has always been about finding the right strategy to get the right people to stop and pay attention. With social media you have more tools at your disposal and potential access to countless more people with a far lower upfront cost. The problem is that everyone else also has those tools, meaning that the competition is greater than ever.

The reason we call this a wild west is that while there are some generally accepted strategies, you really can’t afford to tie yourself to any one approach. If you want to be really successful with your self promotion, then you have to be willing to think creatively. You also have to accept one essential truth:

It’s All About Attention

That might sound like an extreme statement but it isn’t. Put simply, self promotion is just the process of getting the right people to look at you.

We’re not saying ‘all marketing is good marketing’ – although there is some truth to that phrase. What we are saying is that while social media can help the right people find out about you, first you have to cut through the noise and the only way to do that is by being memorable.

If you try to follow what someone else has done word for word, then you’re probably not showing people anything they haven’t seen before. In the online space, there are few things more powerful than originality so just checking the classic boxes won’t be enough.

When people think about social media self promotion, they often picture a person caught somewhere between being a workaholic and an influencer. The truth is that while posting a lot to your LinkedIn and sharing professional articles never hurts, there’s always more than one way to stand out online.

So instead of following the beaten track, try to think about what you do that sets you apart and how you can make your online presence really count. If you work smarter, not harder, then social media self promotion doesn’t have to be a constant grind.

Knowing Your Platform

Before we wrap things up, let’s take a moment to talk about platforms. One of the biggest mistakes you can make when first promoting yourself online is failing to understand your platform.

To understand a social media platform you have to understand the three components they’re made up of:

1. Form – What type of media are people posting? Videos, text, images, etc.
2. Presentation – how is the content presented to the user? Some platforms use a scrolling feed (Facebook, Reddit, LinkedIn), others recommend content to you in a side tab (YouTube), and some autoplay content based on your preferences (Instagram, Tiktok)
3. Demographics – who is using the platform? What age are they? Where are they from? What appeals to them about this platform over others?

For example, self promotion on LinkedIn is generally quite transparent. This isn’t a problem because it’s understood that LinkedIn is a career-focused platform. To an extent, people are there to meet and get to know others in their professional space so it helps for that information to be up front and easy to find.

At first glance, Facebook looks very similar to LinkedIn. They both take the same approach to form and presentation. The major difference is demographics. If you’re looking for professional peers, you’ll have a much harder time finding them here. If you’re looking for potential customers for your new business then you’re in luck.

Self promotion on Facebook generally lends itself quite well to small businesses with an online presence as much of the platform is focused around groups. People self-select into these groups based on a shared interest. Put simply, someone in a knitting group is a lot more likely to engage with your online, made-to-order knitting store than someone who’s just coming across it in the wild.

The same basic principles apply to self promotion on twitter, instagram, or any other app. By understanding the platform, you’ll have a far better understanding of how to get the right kind of attention from the right people.