Discussions
Whats wrong with self promotion
Posted by alstallio • 12/02/07 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: promotion shameful shameless
Why is self promotion always classed as shameful. If you don't tell anyone about yourself, how will anyone know.
So I say, 'promote till u cant promote no more'
www.alstallio.com
User Comments
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but why should we care.... self promotion is great! But don't just say hey promote me and give a link. Why should I click on your link, what makes you different than other bloggers out there...... why are you special?-
Surely when your starting out, its ok.You have no choice but to self promote, plus You can only learn from the feedback you generate.
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But, alstallio, what you're saying doesn't make any sense. On the one hand, you're saying, "if you don't tell people about yourself, how will they know" and then on the other you're saying, "why tell people about yourself--surely it's okay to just drop a link if you're new?"
Promotion means giving someone a reason to want to click through to your blog, pick up your book, buy your product...whatever it is that you're promoting. Where's the reason? -
There's effective and ineffective self-promotion. People here are suggesting you choose an effective path. -
Should I tell u why im special or was you just having a rant.
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Don't tell us why you're special...tell us why your BLOG is...or why one particular post is. Make us want to read it.
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It's not shameful. It's shameless. And you're supposed to use that category in order to be honest about your aims. No harm in a little shamelessness. In fact, the term is partly tongue-in-cheek. But if people ignored the category, members would not be able to filter the kinds of discussions they want to read. Not everyone wants to read these plugs for one's own blogs.
By the way, there's no way I'm going to click on your link. A good shameless promotion will include a discussion. It will give us a reason to visit a specific post. It will add value to the discussion boards, instead of looking like begging, the classified section of the newspaper, spam or whatever.-
And what is the effective path.....anyone!
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so what your saying is, don't leave a link anywhere???
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Leave links where they're relevant.
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gmoney is dead on alstallio--dropping a link is not self-promotion. It's more like begging...like a flashing sign that says, "I have nothing interesting to say, but please visit my blog anyway". Real promotion takes place by showing what you have to offer so that they'll be interested in checking out what else you've got.
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Im actually a nice guy when u get to know me.and im very creative....probably why u guys are talking to me now!
But i don't mean to offend anyone.Im just trying to figure out how this thing works. -
Alstallio, I think you've just proved our point. You might very well BE a nice guy and interesting and engaging and insightful and all that...you might have the best blog any of us have ever seen. But you haven't said one word yet to CONVEY that to any of us. I can't speak for anyone else in this thread, but I haven't clicked through to your blog yet...and I'll bet I'm not alone. If you want us to be interested in reading your blog, tell us what we'll find there that we might want to read, and why it matters to us. Better yet, tie it in to a discussion people can engage in here, as well.
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Yes, but for that matter, why use any of these networking tools if not to explore and see what's out there? We're all self-profmoters, otherwise, we could just keep a diary.
As others have pointed out, self-promotion is a way of saying "Hey! Look at me." Once I look, if you just stand there, doing absolutely nothing, you've simply wasted my time.-
What a great analogy, Unfettered.
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I dont mean to waste yours or anyone else's time.I just wanna know the reason why everyone is so nervous about self promotion.
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Thanks stoneman! first thing, I leave my link everywhere....lets just say its kind of a signature. second
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Leaving your link everywhere might be a signature to you, but to me it's spam.
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I'll second that. Alstallio, there are a lot of regular participants here who make it a point never to click on links that they find "left everywhere". To me, indiscriminate link dropping really screams that you have absolutely nothing interesting to say that might encourage us to read your blog, and so you're just going to throw a bunch of links up against the wall and hope something sticks. My optimism that you'll have anything interesting to say on your blog is pretty low, if you can't think of anything but your link to say in a discussion forum.
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The effective path is a bit different for everyone, depending on your personality, goals and the nature of your blog. But a few things that seem to be universally useful include:
Intelligent participation in discussion threads and forums, especially those frequented by people who might be interested in your subject matter.
"Shameless promotions" that actually tell us something about your blog or a particular post in a way that makes someone interested in clicking through.
Commenting intelligently on other blogs (actually engaging in conversation and adding something of value, not just creating a comment as an excuse to drop your link), especially those frequented by people who might be interested in your subject matter.
Joining groups and social networking sites and actually using them in a way that intelligently rates and promotes other blogs and sites based on their quality and interest to you--especially within the niche where your blog best fits--and engaging other users in meaningful dialogue.
You'll probably notice the common thread is participation and actual discussion...so far as I know, there's no effective hit-and-run method for promoting a blog.-
Thanks for that babe! I'll give it a try and see how it works out for me.
And may I add, you certainly know how to write.
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It makes no sense, but I think if you are talking about some of the blogs out there which are mainly link farms and do end up with good rankings because of it you will probably be successful to some degree begging links. It won't make you good, and it really won't make people read you, it will just give you a lot of links.
I suggest finding some blogs that interest you and start commenting but do not start posting gratuitous comments as there is nothing more useless to most blog conversations than "great post". If you have an interest in others and subsequently in you readers they in turn may end up with an interest in you and may feel vested in your blog. Tht is when you have won on some level. I still believe to do this well, and for it to be genuine takes some time.-
Thanks! I Think you are right but....not all of us have a lot of time on our hands.This is the undisputed champion of problems.
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It is, indeed, Al...for most of us. But the fact that we're short on time doesn't make shortcuts effective, only desirable.
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Surely there's another way! I dont know...maybe multi-bloggin' or something.
If I have ten blogs, I cant keep up with all of them. Im just one man!-
Indeed. And pointing out that people are short on time is exactly why so many of us avoid random links dropped all over the place. If I clicked on every link I saw, I'd never get anywhere on the net I wanted to be. I don't have time to click on all those links.
Sure, there are some services out there - Entrecard is an interesting new example - where link exchanging is exactly the point. Most of us use the Internet as a browsing library, unless we're headed toward a specific destination. When I see a link, without explanation, I ignore it.
Honestly, though, how many of our blogs have you visited since starting this conversation? Because this is the two-way-street nature of places like Blog Catalog. I visit blogs that interest me, and I hope those writers visit mine, too.
Also, why have 10 blogs if you can't keep up with them? Why not just have one really good one? -
I think ten blogs is too much. You are much more likely to do well if you start with one or two blogs which are really good.
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Maybe Dane Morgan's explanation will help explain what I've been trying to.
www.blogcatalog.com/discuss/entry/want-people-to-visit-your-blog-its-simple
There's not much else I can say. If you want readers, make them want to read you. Don't assume we're lurking here just waiting for the next link to click.-
Thanks for bringing that thread back up, Mark. Dane gave out some excellent advice along with some clear concrete examples in that thread.
Al, Mark's last point here is a good one. At some point in the past couple of days Tony mentioned that there are more than 80,000 blogs listed with Blog Catalog. No one is ever going to get to look at all of them, or even most of them...or probably, even, a substantial minority of them. Just like you said, we all have limited time--so if you want us to spend it reading your blog instead of working on our own or reading blogs we already know we enjoy or playing with our kids or playing Freecell, you'd better give us a reason. -
Thanks for the link! I'll be sure to read it.
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Al, I'd just like to point out that there are now 28 posts in this thread (11 from you) and it's been going on for well over an hour and none of us yet have any idea what your blog is about.
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And I wonder if anyone has clicked. And for that high number of posts, notice how small the number of "Recent Readers" is. A case in point?
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I clicked on the profile, but it only seemed to say something like "I'm really cool. You'll like me." Which, of course, I intend to judge for myself. I might, I might not.
On the other hand, MadameX's writing was so well done, and her points so well laid out, I visited her profile, promptly friended her and am now off to read her blog. I think that's a good example of how participation can lead to effective promotion, whether or not that was the initial intent.
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Alstallio:
Here's the deal: You give, you get. I am in agreement with our fellow BCer's. It helps if you become a community member, not a spammer simply self-promoting, but an interested participant in the community. If you care, we care. But I will not go clicking on spam links and wasting my time UNLESS there is something compelling about it. All of us have a blog, some of us have more than one, and we ALL want to be noticed. But BC is not set up to simply highlight blogs. We are a community, a social community, where there is sharing and discussions about a myriad of things. Step in and join the party, but if you spam, know that people will not respond.
Let me ask, rhetorically, how many fellow BC blogs have you actually visited and made insightful comments? This, too, will help your self-promotion, if you will. So go to it. Mine first
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Im here every night replying to the all the blogs. I think I spend at least 3-4 hours of my long night thinking of what to write. and noone every reads my stuff anyway, so I just write crap like this. Come on look at some of the blogs...mindless to say the least. Besides this is now my most visited blog. job done.
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I actually don't recall seeing you on the discussion boards, but maybe I wasn't paying attention.
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Self promotion is one thing, but begging is another. You have to do a little promoting to get your name out there, but there's a way to go about it...and it's not by dropping links everywhere and begging people to visit.-
excuse me miss...no one is begging. I did not write go to my site. I just left a signature.
Everywhere I write I leave it.
I'm sorry if it upsets some of u. -
I didn't say you were and am sorry if it was implied...I was simply answering your question of "what's wrong with self promotion?"
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A lot of people leave signatures to begin with. Most stop after a while. This might be peculiar to BlogCatalog's forum. In any case, the signature is unnecessary, because we can click on your avatar to get to your profile. Just did it. Sure enough, there's your blog. Clicked on that to see your blog page here on BC.
Might I suggest more informative tags than the ones you have? "Free house Easy original smooth upbeat" might describe your blog to you, but it says nothing to me. Let me guess. Are we talking music? Or is this a personal blog and this is how you see yourself. Add a bunch more tags so your blog shows up in search results here.
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Its ok, this is a sensitive subject. I see that now.
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This is one tough Discussion. Why don't we just ignore the links? if I want to post a link up ( and posting a link is NOT spamming) unless I am not adding to the conversation. I really don't see anyone really complaining about bloggers posting their blog link in a Discussion.
Even starting a thread about "show me your blog" is not spamming ,in my opinion. I have gone to blogs on that thread and rarely posted mine, so it will get people to see your blog. Not everyone lives here and do not particiapate in lengthy discussions about "what we all had for Breakfast" type posts lol
This Board feels like Blogger cutting people out lol-
Good response! Alittle late though.. They already killed me, or should I say overkilled me:)
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@ Zawadi: Yeah, we're rough, but you know that Zawadi. Ignoring might be effective, but it also might even be meaner than what we're doing. When we ignore, the blogger might never figure out how to access people here. Know what I mean?
@ Alstallio: Toughen up. We're being friendly. What if we did what Zawadi did and just ignored? Would you really be happier? -
Al, what you refer to as "killing you" here is something some of us get paid quite well for in other contexts...it's a gift.
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A gift indeed Now if adjunct professors only made enough!
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Regarding my comment about your tags above, if this is music, start a thread about a music issue under shameless blog promotion. Visit it several times so you can keep up with people in different time zones. There are quite a few music bloggers here. And there are more people who like music. Perhaps you have something to teach us? To turn us on to?
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You know stone man has a point there.....I am happy because I learn't something today.
I wont repeat it, but it would make u laugh. -
I know its called 'critique'
Im in the entertainment business.I know All about it. -
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Nothing is wrong with it. I believe that we all should support each other also.-
Maybe you're right! But only when u say when ur promoting.
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Here's another link to a discussion thread that may help with promoting your blog.
www.blogcatalog.com/discuss/entry/utilizing-a-thread-to-get-some-traffic -
well after this post kept on growing and growing I took a look at your site. To say the least it needs up. But I am not hear to criticize, but I am here to say if you would have said hey I am in the music industry I have music on my site and in my industry people always self promote, but why is there such a issue with self promotion........ I think that more people would have participated, visited your site and given more info..... that is just my opinion.
Nice music you have streaming, but your site needs some help!-
Thanks, You are not the first to say that.Ok heres the deal. I'm not really a web designer, so I dont know whats what. what can u recommend. of do u have a blog or know a blog that can help.Maybe ill start a blog on this subject.
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