We are all very well familiar with shameless self-promotion.  You’ve probably stumbled across other people’s blog posts hailing the latest event that they’re promoting.  As an introverted entrepreneur, I’ve become quite sensitive to the short attention span people have developed for this sort of thing.  Let’s face it; nobody cares about your business as much as you do.  And they certainly don’t care to read about your business as much as they would like to have you read about theirs.  I’ve noticed that when I’m talking to people in person, I can only talk about something that I’m promoting for about ten seconds or so before people’s eyes start to glaze over and they start looking over my shoulder for an escape hatch.  On the internet, this is the point when they hit the “back” button.

If you’ve read Freakonomics by Malcolm Gladwell, you know that economics is the study of incentives.  (If you haven’t read it, go read it now).  In any case, if you want to start driving more traffic to your web site, your blog, your e-newsletter, or any other materials you create, you can do so if you give people a self-interest in reading them and telling their friends about them.  Hint: no one is interested in hearing you talk about yourself.  But everyone is Narcissistic and in love with the sound of their own name.  That’s where the shameless promotion of others comes into play.  Allow me to demonstrate.

My friend and esteemed colleague, Anora McGaha, is a fellow blogger and prolific writer.  She understands this principle very well.  In her blog, Round About Apex, she highlights several businesses that she visited and had a good experience with.  Here are some examples.  She highlights a children’s store called Little Tomo, a Mediterranean bistro that serves gourmet soft-serve ice cream, and a jewelry gallery.  I like the blog posts about the children’s store and jewelry gallery because the photos are neat and eye-catching, and they had me looking at them more than once (a hard thing to do these days, what with so many neat things to look at, so few hours in the day, and such a short attention span on my part).  And soft-serve ice cream is my personal equivalent to crack cocaine.

Now, I know that Anora is going to read this article, and she may well forward it to her friends or even link to it in her blog.  Not because it’s particularly well written (notice the false modesty), but because I’ve put her in the spotlight.  Lesson learned; the quality and style of writing doesn’t matter nearly as much as the self-interest of the audience.  If your name was mentioned in here, you’d be hanging on to every word.  What else would grab your attention and keep it?  Ask yourself this the next time you write a blog post.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 21st, 2008 at 2:41 am and is filed under Uncategorized You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.