Promote the Right Way (where Right equals “Interesting”)

There’s this notion that people don’t like to feel like they’ve been sold. I completely agree with it. However, I see people fighting this idea all the time. Shameless/blatant self-promotion rarely gets us the response we want. The reason? It’s uncreative.

How much effort does it take to say “Hey Everybody! Look at me! Buy my stuff! Support me! Send clients my way! Give me! Give me! Give me!” This is an instant turn off. What ever shall we do? Allow me to explain a scenario that really happened, and exemplifies the notion of selling around a product.

So what happened?
1. I thought what he had to say was interesting.
2. I realized that I never heard of this Richard St. John guy.
3. I decided to see what this dude has done, so I Googled his name.
4. I went to his Website and watched the 6-minute version of the 2-minute video above.
5. I tried to discover why this dude is qualified to tell me anything.
6. I checked his offerings.
7. I went to Amazon.com to see if I could “look inside.”
8. Test drove his book by using the “Surprise Me!” feature…repeatedly.
9. I like what I see, and I purchase the dude’s book.
10. And now I just blogged about this dude…again.

What Richard St. John did, YOU want to do. Not once did he mention that he actually had a book in his 2-minute presentation. He was just interesting enough to cause me to seek him and his offerings out. Focus on being interesting, or “remarkable;” that is, worth remarking about.