Four Simple Principles of Promotion

Article as appeared in The New Leaf ™.

The next four principles of Authentic Promotion are along the lines of "All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten." They are:

Keep It Simple

Double Check Your Promotional Pieces (and Everything You Do In Print or Online is a Promotional Piece)

Mind Your Manners

Promotion is moving yourself (remember its root) into the awareness of those people whom you expect to benefit from knowing of your work. In other words, itís about relationships. Therefore, it stands to reason that you will draw on basic relationship-building tools.

Keeping it simple means communicate in ways people can understand. Avoid jargon, unnecessarily complex language or hype. The truth, told with good will to people who will profit from hearing it is your most powerful selling message.

Proof your work. Every time I advise this in writing I find an error in my own work that escaped me. Thus this one goes hand in hand with having a sense of humor and humility. Itís hard to perfect, and your audience will certainly notice if you are habitually sloppy.

This double-checking applies to everything you do that puts you in front of a prospective client. Many otherwise impeccable people have unbelievable typos on their Web sites or forget to proof their emails. (I swear by Eudora Pro's typo flagging feature.)

Finally, mind your manners. Yes, I do mean say "Please" and "Thank You." In addition, send thank you cards, not only because it is a nice thing to do but because of the salutary effect it will have on your mood. Itís hard to be grumpy when you are sincerely grateful.

Manners today include online etiquette or netiquette. In case you missed it a few months ago, here is a good link (with many new links) for learning about good manners online.

Netiquette: an extensive online guide.