You know you need to promote yourself and your business… but…

OK, here are a couple of easy ways for you to promote yourself, even if you hate it.

=> 1. Act "As If"

Are you a success? Of course you are. You're as successful right now as you will ever be, because success begins in your mind, in your vision of yourself. From today, start acting as if you were already a successful self-promoter.

I'm not recommending that you indulge in any outlandish behavior, or that you pretend. Let's see how acting "as if" works.

Here's a scenario. Your vision of yourself is that of a successful feature writer for newspapers and magazines. In order to become that success, you act as if you already were successful --- you promote yourself and your work.

What does a successful feature writer do? That person networks, chases up ideas, and writes and sells feature articles. You see yourself as a success, so you research and write article proposals and network. Not too many weeks down the track, you sell your first article, and then another.

You keep on acting "as if", because you know that one swallow doesn’t make a summer. At this stage, acting the way a success acts is becoming more natural to you. You feel comfortable networking and interacting with others --- and guess what? You're handling self-promotion just fine.

=> 2. Networking: the basis of self-promotion

To become successful and comfortable promoting yourself, you need to be comfortable writing and talking about yourself, your work, and your experiences, and you need to do that every day. In other words, you need to network.

There are hundreds of online discussion groups. Join several.

The groups you join will ask you to send a short bio introducing yourself and your interests to the other members. Please do this. If you're very shy, writing this may be torture. Please persist! I promise you that this kind of thing gets simpler after a while. After you've struggled through four bios of various lengths, you'll no longer sweat the process.

Author of many books, including Making the Internet Work for Your Business, copywriter and journalist Angela Booth also writes copy for businesses large and small, and consults on search engine marketing. Angela has written copy for companies in many industries, ranging from technology and real estate to the jewellery trade. Her clients include major corporations like hp (Hewlett Packard), WestPac Bank, and Acer Computer. For copywriting services and marketing advice contact Angela at angelabooth.com

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