A lot of people confuse personal branding with shameless self-promotion and for good reason. Personal branding involves letting your audience know that you exist, including your achievements, what you stand for and what you can provide to them. Branding would be ineffective if you just did it for a single day, which is why our marketing plans last for our entire lives. Companies don’t just hire PR firms for a day or even week. It’s usually over four to six months or more. It’s like a rock band that only comes out with one album or single; it’s harder for them to become more successful because there is no new content to get people engaged again. 
To be a very successful brand, you have to be an aggressive self-promoter. All major successful brands are constantly promoting themselves for awareness, for repetition and for pushing people to buy their products and/or services. This happens in companies like Ford or IBM, as well as with personal brands, where self-promotion is looked down upon by some. Research has shown that a person will likely remember a product or brand after seeing a branded advertisement 3 times. If the three times are in close proximity, there is a very good chance people will remember it. If you appear everywhere, from the New York Times, to Lifehacker to CNN, within a given period of time, it will have more of an impact then if they appeared in intervals of ten days, for instance.
Today, as self-promoting online becomes habitual and routine, everyone in some form or another is participating in this “negative” activity, almost every day and sometimes without even knowing. That is why I would like to examine a word that is the antonym of self-promotion: “humble.” I, for one, could never consider myself humble, although I don’t promote myself in a malicious way. I think if I were “humble,” I wouldn’t have been even close to as successful as I am today. In this web 2.0 world, we’re constantly publishing content, from a Facebook status update, to a tweet, to a YouTube video and more. It was much easier to stay humble in a web 1.0 world, where most of our interactions were through email, on the phone and in person. When conversations are put online, it becomes harder to remain humble because people are less careful, they want to be known (ego’s) and most of the content produced online is text, so it lacks the ability to analyze if the person is humble or not.
What does it mean to be humble?
Humble: Not proud or arrogant; modest: to be humble although successful. Having a feeling of insignificance, inferiority, subservience, etc.: In the presence of so many world-famous writers I felt very humble. – Dictionary.com
So the case I want to make is two-fold:
- When you’re sharing and publishing content everyday, which is mostly in text form, how can you remain humble?
- When you want to differentiate yourself from other people and appease hiring mangers, how can you remain humble?
A lot of decisions are made by information that is found online, both in the hiring sense and when it comes to purchasing products. If you are very humble and don’t brag about what you’ve done or intend to do, then you miss major career opportunities. I don’t believe there’s anyway to come off as humble online if you’re building a strong personal brand.
I don’t think the word “humble” is empowering either. If you look at the second part of the definition above, you’ll see that it breeds inferiority and insignificance. To me, that’s quite negative, especially when I try teach people how to live a fulfilling life and become the #1 person in their niche!
To be completely humble in this web 2.0 environment means to be hidden, and walked over by your competitors, who aren’t humble and will steal the opportunities that you deserve. I’m not saying to be mean or out-of-character, but I am saying to self-promote, in a way that strategically positions you as the best person to do business with.
Self-promotion is here to stay, but it will only get you so far
I always that you have to strike balance between promoting yourself and promoting others. It’s easy easy and free to promote other people’s work, whether it’s a simple retweet, a link in a blog post, an interview, etc. If all you do is self-promote, you will be blocked, unfriended and ignored. You only make money when you can serve (provide value) to others and you can’t network if all you do is talk about yourself. Keep this all in mind because we can’t ignore this simple fact.
Is this a Gen-Y thing?
Now you’re thinking “it must be a Gen-Y thing.” You may be right. A recent study out of SDSU confirms that 57% of young people believe their generation uses social networking sites for self-promotion, narcissism and attention seeking. As much as this may prove your current hypothesis, a survey of other generations wasn’t taken. As more and more Gen-X’ers (Twitter’s main user base) and baby boomers use social media to connect, I think you’ll see this is more of a widespread “epidemic” rather than just a concentration of a specific demographic. It’s pretty obvious that entire families are on Facebook now and that will be more commonplace after the next few years.
What do you think?
Do you consider yourself humble? Has online branding impacted how you come across?
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I think a it has a lot to do with being honest and the ‘tall poppy syndrome’. If you make a series of outlandish statements regarding yourself but have neither the experience or expertise to back it up then you aren’t being honest and definately aren’t being humble. People recognise this and will not respect/believe your personal Web 2.0 brand. However if you are able to back up what you say, then I believe being humble is a necessary casualty of this new world.
I read a quote somewhere (can’t recall the author) that said something like “I’m not important enough to be humble”! Only the greatest can really BE humble, like God or Ghandi.
I agree that it’s terribly important to self-promote, particularly for a personal brand. Otherwise, you don’t really have a business, do you? It’s more like a hobby.
If your hobby is your business, you’ve really succeeded Maria.
The key for me is value and contribution. I tune out people that just make noise promoting themselves and what they have to sell. But I tune in people that consistently make a contribution from their value platfrom and ask for nothing in return. If you can focus on contributing significance and value, not only will you help others but you will make yourself more significant and valuable.
Bret, I’m in full agreement with you. If you don’t give any value, no one will care about you.
I think I agree with Bret – it is possible to make a contriubution online, that builds your reputation, without being arrogant. If you add value, other people may say your great – but you should never say it yourself.
Maria, you might enjoy the Tao Te Ching which says, amongst other things, that only the humble can really be great.
Sorry, Dan, I agree with most of your posts but I have to disagree on this one. I believe that you can go about building your personal brand while being humble rather than arrogant and while be humbled by other people’s great work..
Note that the definition you used for humble has two parts for two different uses of the word, they are not supposed to be used together. The first part is to be humble rather than arrogant. The second part is to to be humbled/respectful of someone who you admire and who knows more than you.
You can have an online presence and have the goal that Bret has- to provide “value and contribution”. I believe you share this goal- your content is very useful! The next question is in how you self promote yourself. I think you can do this with arrogance OR with humbleness. Perhaps we should check out some people’s personal brands and see which they use for self-promotion.
I think the same dilemma occurred in the past in traditional business, where business leaders had to decide if they needed to be arrogant aggressive networkers or if they could concentrate on providing value and contribution while being humble. The result? Both types of leaders have succeeded, though you might “hear more” about the former.
Keep up the great work!
I love this quote from Les Brown; Help others achieve their dreams and you will achieve yours. This sums up all who are successful with web 2.0
Cj, thanks for sharing that. The “give before receive” mentality always works.
I think the problem is in the definition: I’d frame humility as an accurate assessment of oneself. Self promotion, in the business world, isn’t good or bad in itself, but (potentially) a method of contribution. If you’re adept in a field, stepping forward to say “I can do that” isn’t proud or arrogant, it’s service to another. On the other hand, self promotion over another, or inaccurately, has huge potential to detract from your personal brand. If you want that brand to stay true, I’d argue you must be humble.
I live by the rule, “You can get everything in life you want if you just help enough other people get what they want.” Social media is a great opportunity to help others while promoting yourself. (much like CJ’s comment)
Melissa
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