Fear, embarrassment.. and self-promotion

This July, I have mainly been… embarrassed

I’m British. Embarrassment is our superpower. And in general, I’m pretty good at it. But last month I had more reason than usual.

I reissued my book on club culture, Adventures In Wonderland, so I’ve been doing promotion for it. Which means relentlessly posting in Facebook groups dedicated to the acid house, rave and the specific clubs I cover in the book. I did a fun podcast for Rock’s Back Pages, and interviews for several blogs, as well as writing a piece about the return of illegal raves for The Guardian.

In the middle of what felt like constant wittering about me, me, me, an old friend called. Someone still closely connected with the club world, he is involved in many of the FB groups I’d been bombarding. Indeed, I assumed that’s what had led him to call me. 

We chatted for a while, caught up on news, and then I wondered, somewhat anxiously, whether he thought I’d gone for overkill on the book promotion.

“What book?” he asked. 

There is a lesson here for all of us.

We need to be excited by the things we create. But we also need to get our audience excited. And we do this by parking our embarrassment and sharing our work, shamelessly. We need to do this again and again and again. And then do it some more. 

We often think we’re shouting when hardly anyone has heard us yet. And many of us give up far too soon, thinking no one wants what we’ve made.

It’s a truism in advertising that most people need to be told about something at least seven times before they’ll buy it. They need seven separate points of contact.

A tweet. A post. An ad. An interview. A radio plug. A podcast. A picture. An interaction of some sort with you online.

Don’t worry about repeating yourself.

One of the joys of self-publishing is that you get data in real time. You know when people have clicked on a link, when they’ve bought a copy. If you release via Kindle Unlimited, you even get to see how many pages of the book people have read, day by day.

So I know that it took a week of posting before the sales of my book really started to build. The initial burst of publicity – that I’d seen as overkill – led to barely anyone clicking through to look at the book. 

I thought I was driving people mad, but they’d actually only just started to notice. It took another two weeks for sales to take off.

If it helps, reframe it slightly.

You’re not promoting yourself, not really. You are promoting your work.

A song someone might really need to hear. An artwork that provokes, or inspires. A photograph that helps someone see the world differently. A book packed with useful information or entertaining stories. A drama that will help people escape for a while. An outfit to make the wearer feel beautiful, or powerful – or both.

You’re giving people something they might want, or need. That might entertain, surprise or inspire them. And what’s wrong with that?

Here’s what happened for me, when I got over myself and just continued to tell people the book was out:

I’m sharing this because it’s an issue for many creatives.

We all shy away from talking about our work, playing big or taking up too much space. Being visible, and putting our work out there to be judged and possibly rejected is frightening.

So we tell ourselves stories, and we believe them: 

“I’m not one to blow my own trumpet.”

“No one wants to hear me going on about my stuff.”

“I don’t want to seem too full of myself.”

“It’s not for me to say whether my work is good enough.” 

A couple of weeks ago, I listened while a really talented artist client told me a long and convoluted tale about why he couldn’t promote his own work to his 27,000 followers on Instagram.

In his own head, this story had some logic. But the more he explained it out loud to someone else, the more absurd it sounded. By the end of it, we were both laughing and he knew what he needed to do.

“Just get over yourself, and post more work,” I said. “Put it out there.”

And then I realised: I was also talking to myself. 

Your challenge

So what are you making, that’s exciting? 

How are you going to tell people about it? 

And what would you do if you had no fear – or if you were totally shameless about self-promotion?

Go on, do it. Especially your answer to the last question. 

I dare you.

Because those who dare.. sometimes win.

(And whatever you do, let us know how it went, in the comments below.)

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 Sheryl Garratt is a writer and a coach helping creatives to get the success they want, making work they love. Ready to grow your creative business? Click here for my free 10-day course.