Lessons in Self-Promotion: Toastmaters Monthly “How Is Your Social Media”

Lessons in Self-Promotion: From Toastmaters “How Is Your Social Media”

This April 2010, Toastmasters had an excellent article titled “How is Your Social Media Etiquette?” The article is essentially a 2 ½ page bulleted list of key points about using Facebook and LinkedIn effectively.


There were two important lessons that I took away here

Be Real - The social media is a bundle of tools to get to know other people better. Right, it’s not like we want to connect with robots. Weinberg writes “Social media mimics real relationships in many cases. Would you do the following in real face-to-face relationships”. Absolutely true. Now, I think there is better access to old friends, new friends, family, and all sorts of things on facebook. Just as in real life, there are varying degrees to the depth of these relationships. So I think it’s critical to keep private messages private, and public messages uplifting.
My sister and I were talking about this some time ago how people jump quicker into relationships, do not take the time to let them develop, when they are from online partnerships (think dating sites, message boards, online chats). The real danger here is someone never getting to know you, because you’ve thrown everything you can onto the wall, and want it to stick. What a mess.

Self Promotion –

What I want to expand on here is the idea of self-promotion. I completely believe in the importance of promoting your skills, values, and your causes. This is what is important to you. However, it is easy to distribute ideas (videos, blogs, notes) and forget if it’s appropriate to the audience. Sure you can tell everyone on your network about your romantic successes…but do you want that going out to your tech-savy grandma who uses the computer all day? You want to meet lots of people, why not. But don’t go inviting everyone and their ten cousins to your facebook if you’ve never met them, especially if you don’t disclose the reasons for the invitation. Great ideas can stand on their own. If you have an event you want people to come to – invite with grace. Personalized invitations, announce sometime before, be honest about the atmosphere and expectations. People want to help people..and they will help you too. Just do it in a way that is true.

Be real and self-promote, and do it with grace.