David Theus

When I look back over my career path, one thing stands out in every position that I have ever held – self promotion. Every thing I have done has involved me selling me first versus me selling a particular widget. Mind you, there were products and services that needed to be sold, but without my customer’s first making the decision to buy me, there would never have been a sale.

Take my latest career path, which my wife has coined to be my second career, corporate America being my first, self promotion is at its core. As I study other authors, information junkies, or better yet, bloggers – the one thing that all of us have in common is self promotion. The internet has given me and many others a unique venue in which to be recognized.

I can remember working for an investment-information publishing company right out of college. The firm was small yet had a fairly large number of individual investors whom subscribed to one or several informative vehicles. Whether it was one of the firm’s monthly magazines or they were participants in any of four off site financial seminars.

During my tenure at this particular firm, I became close friends with several so called investment experts who were authors and self publishers of their own monthly newsletters. During the late 1980’s this was a very popular and lucrative business within the individual investor circle to be a guru or pundit of this type of information, all available to each investor for a mere subscription fee.

Of course with the costs of printing and postage ever increasing, the desire for receiving information quicker than before, and not to mention this thing we call the web which allows us to go to press, as it were, instantly – that segment of the market has all but gone away. Now we are left with those of us, present company included who may now reach an exposure rate of millions versus what ever our limited marketing budgets would allow. This is a good thing!

As in the investment publishing business, it took years and years to develop subscribers to any one service. There were special offers to try out any one of the products, then, there were the special offers that had to be extended to the customer to stay. With this worldwide community, any one can type in a subject matter that they might have interest in and the search engines do the rest of the work.

Just as the financial experts, gurus, and or pundits did, we must become experts and pundits of our own scope of information. Thus allowing those interested, the opportunity to single you out for more information, and or hire you to perform some form of service. The good news is the shear numbers that can be tantalized by your bounty of information. The bad news is the shear numbers that can be tantalized by your bounty of information that go on with their daily lives, never ever knowing your name, because you didn’t self promote.

I have prepared what I like to call the Blake Thomas Top Five. This is a list of things you must do and continue doing in order to be successful at self promotion. First things first:

1) Identify what subject matter, skill set, or labor of love that you are currently an expert in, or one you would be willing to constantly put the effort forth to become an expert, guru, or pundit.

Don’t over think this. Your past career path may have had elements of this trait wrapped up inside of it, or better yet, you may be very good at a particular hobby. You don’t have to have a master’s degree in fly tying, or kite making, you just have to be passionate and be willing to never stop learning more about it.

2) Find a local company that will design a simple web page for you – using your name somehow in the domain name, keep it simple. This web site should define who you are and the interest and expertise you have on that particular subject matter.

Once again, do not over think this either. You want to sit down with this web designer and let he or she get to know who you are, and most of all what information you wish to relay to others that might be interested. This should cost less than $1500 to get started.

3) Go to your local newspaper, and those in your surrounding area. Be sure that these particular newspapers publishes their paper on the web weekly, daily, or whatever their frequency and inquire about the opportunity of submitting an article or articles for free on this subject matter.

4) Start writing. Every day set aside time where you can come to the computer and start putting thought to paper as it were.

Be sure that all of your articles submitted to your local papers have the address of your website as your contact or a part of your byline. Never miss an opportunity to let someone know that you have a website. Even in your everyday email communication with friends, family, and possible associates - be sure to list your site in your signature at the bottom of every email.

5). Lastly, have fun!

Sometime ago I started to wonder if there were ever a job that you could be so happy doing, being paid for it would be just an added bonus. The answer is yes! When you are willing to get up in the middle of the night to jot a few notes down, just because, or you are willing to enroll in a class that will help better prepare you for this task, you are well on your way. Passion is a great motivator and sales aid.