I knew it wouldn’t be easy.
I don’t mean writing a book, though I knew that would be challenging.
Promoting it. I knew self-promotion would be the most challenging aspect. But the reasons might surprise some people.
“I would not have expected that,” a friend and former colleague told me when I confided in her. “You’re in marketing, you of all people should find promoting your book easier than someone who knows nothing of how it works.” She’s not wrong.
I do know how to do it. That’s the irony. I’ve been a marketing professional for over three decades. I know marketing.
To be fair, not all marketing is the same. Tactics and variables can vary widely from one market and buyer to another. Marketing a book is quite different than marketing corporate healthcare. However, the fundamentals remain, and I understand them well. The book itself is testimony. That’s not the problem.
It’s not that I don’t know what to do. It’s that doing it – promoting myself – is something I’ve always been self-conscious about. I come from the show-don’t-tell philosophy. It’s always better when someone else does the telling.
It’s a challenge that has haunted me throughout my professional life as both an owner and consultant.
I discounted the promotion early in the book’s development as I did not expect to do much marketing. I didn’t write it expecting a best seller and steady royalties. It’s a business book, a niche one at that. The goal of writing a book was for market authority and as a positioning anchor. It was conceived as a marketing resource and inbound signal.
Promoting the book makes me feel like I’m on a soapbox extolling my virtues to anyone in range of my social media shouts. In fact, there have been very few posts. The limited promotion I have done is via LinkedIn messages to friends and professional connections. But my LinkedIn connections are not representative of my target audience. It did, however, give me a reason to reach out and reconnect. Somehow, the existing relationship makes it a bit easier to share the news.
I need to get over it if I’m to improve my awareness outreach, but it somehow makes me feel cheap and dirty, so I resist, procrastinate, and overthink it.
The real irony is that it has become more stressful. I’ve wasted time dreading the tactic and dragging my feet rather than focusing and getting it done. It’s all the baggage with none of the rewards.
I know I need to get over it. Maybe that’s what led to this story? Maybe?
This article was originally published on Medium
Ed Youngblood is a B2B brand and marketing strategist. His book, B2B Brand Strategy, provides frameworks and tools for building strategic brands without an agency (and was the inspiration for this commentary). It is available on Amazon and other leading sellers as e-book and paperback to fit your reading preference.