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What an excellent, insightful post. This really resonates:
"when self-promotion is done right, it never looks like self-promotion"
Blatant self-promotion manages to cause a visceral reaction in me, but as you note when someone is doing it obliquely then it just becomes an overall part of the story (indeed you the author are doing that a bit here which I wouldn't have even really noticed had you not mentioned it).
I'm part of an online community that recently had someone come in, manage to get an admin role and start self-promoting the heck out of themselves and their project. My initial reaction was to take my ball and go home. But some more even-minded folks helped me understand that really it is just, at its root, failed communication. The person likely has a real interest in helping and growing the community, but at the same time is balancing their interest/need to self-promote their own project. If their messaging were just a bit better and less explicit then it could come off in a completely different way.
Thanks for sharing such a great piece!
> Blatant self-promotion manages to cause a visceral reaction in me
Your visceral reaction is because you are not the intended audience for a piece of marketing. For example, music that’s noise to me may be melody to someone else.
We have had so many instances of being exposed to marketing not intended for us that we (a) don’t want to perpetuate the cycle by marketing ourselves (b) don’t even recognize good marketing any more.
The reason for this is that in the internet age, we’re in an always-on marketplace. Being from India, the internet age feels like being in an tourist trap indian bazaar where someone is always trying to sell you something.
This causes you to have your guard up until you can escape to the safety of your hotel room…and that is exhausting.
The answer is to not participate in the tourist trap market. Build your own market (figuratively) by doing your marketing your way and hope people/buyers find you.
Great points about noise, and you really hit it on the nose with your final point—I've heard of a mental model of Twitter being likened to tapping a tuning fork and seeing who resonates (https://twitter.com/kevinakwok/status/1076967914580918277).
The most fun (and probably best) self promotion is done with fun in mind—Tom Critchlow's post on small b blogging vs. content marketing comes to mind (https://tomcritchlow.com/2018/02/23/small-b-blogging/), and he extends his thought with this one (https://tomcritchlow.com/2019/03/12/strange-attraction/). I also liked Matt Webb's post on this (https://interconnected.org/home/2020/09/10/streak).
Please excuse me if I'm being pedantic, I'd change the "hope" point to "showing a person"—even if it's just an email to a friend, cold emailing someone who you quote, etc.
Ah one more thing—I'm sure there's a better way to say this, but basically, the fact you're so considerate about noise is probably a great reason to actually post. I have a feeling the internet needs more people like you!
Based on your description, this community member's behaviour seems rather pathologically transactional, and fundamentally self-serving.
If I were part of a community of people dedicated to a common idea and shared outcome, only to have someone selfishly hijack it after paying lip service, I, too would want to burn the bridges and salt the earth.
Furthermore, while I acknowledge a certain moral superiority of those who are relentlessly graceful, I can see no obvious alternative explanation as to why this person would engage with your community except the willingness to burn $100 of others value in order to acquire $10 of their own.
Reddit is so overrun by mediocre content and reposts on burner accounts because of "anti self promotion" policies.
The real ugly truth is most of the people behind posts making it to the front page are sub mods, spammers, and wealthy individuals that pay regularly for ad promotion... Old reddit was simply better because the community was much smaller, and open to artists and creators posting their own work.
When a platforms grow too big spam and other issues are inevitable, corruption is bound to happen. Instead of fighting posts from people who actually create content, the move should be towards fostering content classification and displaying and moderating content fairly and equally.
The problem is that platforms are not properly nor equally promoting shared content... They are also charging contributors for visibility, while reducing organic visibility to drive their profits up.
Independent (undiscovered) creators aren't rich (and staffed/supported) enough to arrange focus groups and to develop marketing campaigns that "warm your heart", but on platforms, regular creators are foisted into competing for attention for their products and services against well funded and staffed mega-corporations.
Independent (not yet profitable) creators have it harder than ever to achieve visibility now. Favoritism and payola are rampant in all social media settings as well. Most of the things we see first online are well funded and organized campaigns, we just can't tell because suggestive and manipulative marketing has taken over.
This leads independent creators to resort to underhanded techniques like botting and illegal activity to fund paid promotion.
The Internet was originally started based on equal access to Information. By aligning with an ideal that self promotion is a negative thing, that's reinforcing the ideal that equal access should not exist, and it also encourages a lot of negative online activity that serves as a smoke-screen for wealthy corporate interests.
If a site or app can't fairly manage it's audience, that's the first sign it's outgrown it's pants, and turned against equal access to information to favor their own profit... We need to stop supporting sites and apps that serve as smokescreens for big industry profit and return to smaller (independent) communities for promoting business, art, and services because the large ones don't serve independents, they serve big industry.
I prefer ads that are labeled as ads and tied to reputable individuals and companies. That creates trust for me. I do not find trust in ads that use human psychology to indirectly influence decision making... Take crypto for example, it's the primary thing that conveniently "somehow" made it through all the "anti self promotion" gates (for strange unknown and untraceable reasons).
The fight against self promotion is very toxic and has an agenda of it's own in my opinion.
Thanks for the kind words and for reading, I'm glad the post resonated. In situations like online community moderation, self-promotion is doubly sensitive, and timing needs to be super deliberate (e.g., probably only when the need arises, and then passively in signatures or something?). I appreciate you sharing, definitely will be noodling on that some more.
In the 90’s when “selling out” was one of the really big insults you could make in the music scene[1] artist had this tendency of publicly hating on the record company.
“These suits don’t know anything about art, they just want to sell records and we have to fight them every day to make art and stay real”
As I kid I ate this up raw, but I feel like today we have a more mature relationship to this.
In the above made up quote the artist is basically saying “we have a record company that can do the selling out so we don’t have to”
[1] I believe it was the guitarist from Manic Street Preachers who carved “4 real” in his arm with a razor blade as a reaction to an interviewer accusing his band of selling out.
"Selling out" wasn't about signing contracts, selling records, and getting paid. Those were and still are the primary goals of even the punkest bands. When $BAND signs with $INDIE_LABEL no one accuses them of "selling out": friends and fans are happy for them and everyone knows that their first album will be a cleaner version of their second demo and everyone is perfectly OK with all that because it means more gigs, more tours, and more fun for everyone. The punk goes on.
"Selling out" was about abandoning whatever the band or the scene was supposed to be about. It really was more of a moral thing. Of course it meant signing contracts but who they are signed with and what the consequences are for the artistic integrity of $BAND and $SCENE are very important in this case.
"selling out" seems to be cheap criticism done for the sake of it (similar to what we today call "cancel culture")
Yes, I'd like to get paid for my work, thanks very much.
Selling out is not about being paid for your work. Its about milking your product into every possible way just to push profit.
Like making a great successful product that your users love and then selling it to E corp.
There’s inherent wisdom behind the anti-sellout stance though that’s both obvious and yet often overlooked. When you “sellout” you are eroding trust. You’re another straw on the camel’s back. You gradually ruin a good thing for others.
For example, I’m reluctant to invest time in to small saas products because I know their business model is eventual acquisition, which almost always ruins the product. I’ve become far more discerning and cynical of startups.
This can’t be great for software startups if (as) others also adopt my cynicism.
That being said. When you have an opportunity to walk away with millions I’m sure it’s not easy to resist. You might even choose to believe your own PR (E Corp has the resources to take our startup to the next level etc.).
I guess I would have to disagree with that, selling out for me would be decreasing the quality of your work or changing aspects of it at the dictates of another party in order to make profit.
Generally you are selling out to someone, for example a large organization, that then gets to dictate aspects of your work in order to increase the profitability of your work, or ways that they expect will increase profitability. In such a situation you have sold out creative control.
An example of sellout. humble bundle. Even before they decided to be acquired by IGN they just kept pushing more and more crappy bundles just for the sake of profit and not quality. The mindset of making something special was long gone.
Also, if there's a choice between making greater art which is less popular and profitable, or making lesser art which is more popular and profitable, selling out is choosing to create the latter, whereas not selling out is choosing to create the former.
Without having to know anything about art, if the artist persuades you that they are not "selling out" then they're persuading you that they're creating the best art possible i.e. you are consuming the best art possible i.e. you have great taste. Which feels great, so you buy more, which is the real reason why they're saying they're not selling out in the first place.
Unpopular opinion: Picasso was a much better self promoter than painter. He didn't promote his art, he did art to promote himself.
(I understand this opinion is outrageous and provocative; but I do think there's some truth to it.)
You could argue this is true for every well known person. Their primary skill is marketing/promoting themselves, not the thing they are known for.
As a counterpoint/bit of anecdata: Several celebrated painters only really gained widespread acclaim after their deaths.
Van Gogh is one great example of this, though his sister-in-law Johanna van Gogh-Bonger pretty much made it her mission to promote his work after his death; her work is the reason his work gets the recognition it deserves.
You'd argue that to be successful (whatever that means), you've to be good at both things.
One thing the article misses is the reason why we loom down on self-promotion: it's not because it seems easy, but because it's value neutral. Promotion does not care if you actually did any work or are just shilling a bunch of words void of any idea. The visceral reaction to self promotion is in part due to hard won experience that those that talk loudest about their achievements are often lacking in actual value to offer.
That doesn't mean the rest of the article is wrong: promotion is a necessity for most artists ( and many others), but nonetheless there are quite a few people that need to be told to do less self promotion and more actual ( creative, for artists) work.
This is a really interesting point, and I can see where you come from. Generally any time spent on coming up with promotional ideas is usually better spent on making a better product.
I wrote this one for people who doubted the value of their own work, especially when the marketplace sent them signals (or lack thereof) that it wasn't worth much; we conflate popularity and quality too much.
A lot of times I read something great, and I'm often glad, but I also think to myself, "I wish I read this earlier!" I'd love for more people who love creativity and making quality products (and hate self-promotion) to consider promoting their own work, because I know it's out there—I just want to see more of it!
I think there's a lot to unpack in this article. I really struggle with self-promotion[1] - or, as my Mother still insists on calling it, "boasting" (with all the negative baggage associated with that word) - but, as the article says, there really isn't any alternative to it if you want to get your product/work noticed. The internet has super-saturated the marketplaces for ideas, opinions and all the art/code/writing that accompanies the need to be heard/respected by peers/etc.
In my view the Gold Standard for promotion is not self-promotion or paid promotion. It's the elusive word-of-mouth promotion done on your/the work's behalf by complete strangers telling their friends about you/it and encouraging them to go check it out. My evidence for this is based on the number of downloads of my books from Apple Books, Google Play and similar online venues over the past 10 years.
I gave up trying to self-promote my writing many, many years ago. Being rejected hurts; being ignored hurts more. Still, over the past 10 years people have downloaded my books over 40,000 times. The only plausible explanations have to be word-of-mouth, and trickery.
Trickery? Yes. One book in particular[3] gets downloaded far more often than the others - it accounts for around 70% of total downloads. Why? When I first published it I gave it a title that turned out to be pure clickbait. A happy accident! The book does its own self-promotion without any need need for my help.
[1] - Most of my contributions/comments on HN centre around my attempts to self-promote my work in ways that try not to look like marketing spam[2]. I'm sure if I work hard enough at developing this skill I will, eventually, get better at it.
[2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=rikroots
[3] - You can read and/or download the book for free, with no added tracking, from my website: https://rikverse2020.rikweb.org.uk/book/poems-to-quote-to-yo...
Totally agree on word-of-mouth promotion. Rob Fitzpatrick writes about getting your book into the hands of 1,000 readers (Tim Grahl's number is 10,000 https://booklaunch.com/book-launch-numbers/). Fitzpatrick's four ways, and I'm quoting:
- Digital book tour via podcasts and online events (most scalable) - Amazon PPC (pay-per-click) advertising (easiest but unscalable) - Event giveaways and bulk sales (fastest if you have the contacts) - Build a small author platform via content marketing and “writing in public” (most reliable and valuable, but time-intensive)
Congratulations on your books!
(You also make a great point on the pain of being ignored or rejected that comes with promotion. Something to consider for a future post—definitely one of the most significant, overlooked, pains imho.)
>In my view the Gold Standard for promotion is not self-promotion or paid promotion. It's the elusive word-of-mouth promotion done on your/the work's behalf by complete strangers telling their friends about you/it and encouraging them to go check it out. My evidence for this is based on the number of downloads of my books from Apple Books, Google Play and similar online venues over the past 10 years.
It's an impossibly imposed elitist standard on someone who is unknown to get to the point where word of mouth sustains them. It's a very Marie Antoinette attitude. No one reaches that level without self promoting as well, they just secretly use veiled methods like botting, the buddy system, and paid advertising to get there.
Each person involved in promoting themselves has a different product, service, or goal involved in their work. A resume is self promotion that is unavoidable in finding work. I think if the truth was to be told properly, it's mostly people who have audiences already, people who own a stake in platforms, and wealthy/popular people that want to protect their dominance that are pushing the "anti self promotion" campaign, so that they don't have to compete against undiscovered talent.
When people are forced to veil the promotion of their work, it makes it very easy to use negative and controversial tactics like psychological manipulation, disinformation, racism, sexual suggestion, and many other negative tactics to promote their work and products as well. It destroys integrity of art and business because accountability is not upheld by nature in the process.
For example, many music artists are literally posting triggering content and exposing themselves in posts just in hopes of developing their user base, and that's why doom and gloom trends so often on social media now, because of the convoluted state of things. Many artists buy social accounts that already have followers on them, and they enlist promo services for bot views on their music videos... Veiled promotion only encourages corruption and deception in my opinion.
The platforms themselves should be the ones managing and equally promoting undiscovered creators and contributors (as they often promise on sign-up), but they don't do it at all without being paid.
> It's an impossibly imposed elitist standard on someone who is unknown to get to the point where word of mouth sustains them. It's a very Marie Antoinette attitude. No one reaches that level without self promoting as well, they just secretly use veiled methods like botting, the buddy system, and paid advertising to get there.
Perhaps for many, or even most. All I can say is I've never resorted (secretly or otherwise) to the veiled methods suggested. Equally, none of my books have appeared on the NYT bestsellers list, or earned me a Pulitzer, so my word-of-mouth anecdote has clearly failed if the aim of the endeavour is fame&fortune/etc. Which, for me, it isn't.
I can understand your account because the publications industry is foreign to me mostly... Possibly perhaps people who read dig more deeply for new publications?
The experience, methods, and landscape greatly varies for each sort of content being promoted, yet social media only presents one particular success script for everyone, and I think that's a huge problem.
I produce music, and it's a wasteland of major labels being featured while independent labels struggle over table scraps... heh... Quite a different playing field to most others, but also similar in many ways.
The common thread is usually that big business and popular people are more often than not the only ones featured on the front page, and it's a very long, hard and winding road to get to limited placement spots there.
One of the fields I work in is science, and I'd say that 'selling-out' and 'promoting yourself' have always been two different things here, but it has seen similar cultural shifts as others have talked about.
Self-promotion can be very important in science, and I think it can be driven by an enthusiasm and belief that you have something important to say that would help others in their research.
Selling-out had a similar negative connotation in the 90s. Andrew Wakefield had 'sold-out' by associating himself with a business that severely undermined his authenticity. These days, cash-strapped universities encourage researchers to hawk themselves to nearby industry in the hope they can get funding and commercial interest, and many researchers are paid to stand up and talk about commercial products. Science very much relies on speaking honestly and in an balanced way, and combining this with financial interest adds extra strains to integrity.
The Bill Watterson discussion was about what happened after he became famous and he did not need self promotion and had more money than he needed.
He had no desire to do more Calvin&Hobbes. He had enough money.
When there is no necessity of promotion and having said everything that needs to be said, and you just want to sell more, that's when selling out and cashing out comes to the picture.
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ps.
(1) selling out in art means changing the material to a mainstream or commercial audience.
(2) cashing out in this context means milking your art for money without much effort.
(3) promotion is the necessary work to get the attention of the audience who actually like your work.
The benchmark I use for any promotion is value. Immediately create some value.
If there is a high probability that the people you want to reach gain some value out of your (self) promotion, do it. And I mean not the value of the product / you behind it, the value of the promotion itself.
If not, don't do it.
Also applies to multi-million $ campaigns.
Like free speech, people abused communication channels, personal gain is OK but people quickly learned that this is done on their expense, be it their work's credit being stolen (or not fairly shared) or un-proportional recognition is being given for something.
As an example, I used to take part of many Hackathons, as a coder-hacker I loved the social aspect, the inventive work, the crunch mode, the competitiveness.. But some years ago, these events became a competition for some "big heads" judges wanting a "startup worthy business idea" which turned these hackathons into a competition of "PowerPoint engineers".. People would not write a single line of code (best case use some one-pager SaaS generator) and win events..
Anyway, this is part of a bigger culture issue, as a developer I came to look down on non-coder "suites" and their credit taking, "center stage" egos..
I have listened to David Bowies last album Black Star many times. I think most people will agree that it's some of his harder-to-digest work and it took me quite a while to warm up to it. In fact, I am probably still in that process. The only reason I am willing to keep listening is that I know that Bowie was able to create music that affects me deeply so it's likely to be worth it. And even better, in my experience, the music that I have to warm up to tends to be what I love the most over the years where as the refined-sugar stuff tends to please me for a week and then fades.
My point here though is that I would not know this about David Bowie if it wasn't for his easier work and all the promotion that he did/had.
I think many artists go through a process of creating music that is more broadly appealing with time (for instance, Amy Winehouses Back to Black is easier to digest than the previous album Frank). Maybe this is because they want to reach a broader market, or maybe it's because they develop their ear to be better at making stuff that "works", I don't know. But I am grateful for the effect even so, as it seems to be the way my brain deems a new artist worth listening to. But promotion is definitely necessary as well. And this same pattern applies to the other arts just the same.
Reading this, inherent in self-promotion, or at least the examples provided, there is a strong undercurrent of self-promotion implying a relinquishing bi-directional social relationships and replacing them with transactional and parasocial relationships.
If that's truly inherent, it seems rather facile to chalk up people's discomfort as being primarily due to lack of skill.
I greatly benefit from services that find the good non-promoted creators and allow me to discover their creations.
Read Something Interesting [0] is a great example of this, along with all the curated newsletters that are popping up these days.
My issue with this idea of self promoting to stand out (as the article suggests), is that imagine if everybody did it, including all the creators you are competing against for attention. Overall effort increases, but the signal to noise ratio stays the same.
I think an occasional HN post or a tweet is fine, you need to at least introduce your project to the community. But encouraging anything past that first introduction feels like it could lead to a culture of spamming