As a marketing services provider, I know the benefits of promoting myself and my business, but that doesn’t make it any easier to step out of my comfort zone and actually do it. Culturally in Australia, we do tend to be a teeny bit critical about those who enthusiastically share their awesomeness; but we can learn to authentically self promote through telling a story about what we do, and why we do it and gain the benefits of self promotion.
The most compelling reason to try is that customers are going to be more motivated to buy from people they know, like, and trust. Building trust can begin with sharing the story of your business and the people behind it. The imminent change to Facebook Timeline will provide businesses with an improved platform for authentic story telling.
Telling your authentic story can help both you and your prospective customers by:
- Demonstrating your values, so you naturally attract customers who relate to you,
- Explaining why you do what you do, which helps prospective customers understand you and trust you,
- Sharing your unique persona, enabling customers to understand what you’ll be like to work or deal with,
- Clearly identifying your ideal customer, encouraging those that don’t fit to look elsewhere and those that do, to make contact.
As business owners, we owe it to ourselves to become better at communicating our story. We are all passionate about our business. We express love for our new project or idea or product. An authentic story simply links this passion with our unique persona to what we love doing, and a genuine joy becomes evident when we share our story.
Promoting yourself and sharing your story won’t always feel comfortable but to develop and grow, you won’t ever be comfortable. With a bit of practise, you’ll find your story telling skills starting to improve. Given the rapid changes happening with online video and social media, great story tellers will have a seriously big advantage over those that hide behind their computer screens.
If you are shy but have learned how to promote yourself with your story, please share your experiences below. Feel free to give yourself a bit of gratuitous self-promotion at the same time!
About the author: Teresa Bassham is the owner of Zenworkz Authentic Marketing and educates businesses to think, create, engage and optimise their marketing effort. She coaches customers in Social Media Strategy and implementation. If you would like some assistance changing to Timeline for Facebook Pages, please contact her through her website: http://www.zenworkz.com/
Zenworkz Authentic Marketing publishes a weekly blog on small business marketing: http://www.zenworkz.com/blog/
For daily marketing tips and references, connect on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Zenworkz.Authentic.Marketing
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