🌻 I love marketing. As long as it's not for myself
Why self-promotion feels weird, even when you do this for a living
Hey fam!
Just got my issue of Public Garden magazine in the mail! Which includes a fun story by yours truly. I wrote about how some of my favorite scientists at Holden Forests & Gardens are using arboreta and botanical gardens across the country to study plant phenology (aka the study of the timing of plant life cycle events).
The short version: they worked with volunteers at five different botanical gardens who painstakingly tracked the timing of leaf-out, flowering, and fruiting in spring ephemerals, native wildflowers that bloom before trees leaf out each spring.
They found that short bursts of unseasonably warm weather — like a weird 85°F day in February — does shorten the flowering or fruiting window for some species. These plants already have a super short window that they cram their entire above-ground life into, so they’re worried that a warming climate could affect their ability to reproduce. TBD on that.
Anyway, look how pretty:
In other news I just posted to my Ampliflora blog, aka my work blog, for the first time in… *checks notes* eight months. Yikes! Fittingly, the post itself is about why I’m so dang bad at posting to my Ampliflora blog, despite being a literal marketing professional (read: official blog hype woman). I wanted to share it with you, too.
I would love to know if any of you fine folks are in a line of work where you have to market yourself in any way, and if so, if you hate it as much as I do. (And I LIKE marketing! Just not for myself…)
Without further ado:
Marketing is hard. Marketing yourself is hardest.
There are two fundamental truths I want my clients—or really, anyone running a small business or nonprofit—to understand.
Marketing yourself is hard.
Do as I say, not as I do. (Because I, a marketer, am not immune to #1.)
Not everyone likes building their brand
Some people just seem built for self-promotion. They're out there building their brand. They’re staying up late after the kids go to bed, cranking on their e-newsletter and mapping out their content calendar. They’re thriving. They love it. Their coffee mug probably says rise and grind.
Personally? I find all that terribly unrelatable.
This person is not one of my clients, and it’s definitely not me, either. Even I don’t like marketing myself. (Now, marketing someone else? That’s another story.)
While Joe Startup is over there filming another reel, the rest of us—myself included—find the whole thing rather awkward. Whether it’s true humility or just plain insecurity, self-promotion tends to give many of us the ick.
It’s one thing to casually share a post on your Instagram stories and say, “Hey, come to this event I’m a part of!” It’s another thing entirely to be responsible for building an audience and getting people to care—week in, week out—about everything your organization or business is doing.
Marketing is my job. It doesn’t have to be yours, too. Ampliflora helps mission-driven people like you get the word out—without the awkwardness. Whether you need content strategy, support with blogs, or someone to finally look at the numbers and tell you what’s working, I’ve got you. Learn more or get in touch.
How to get over the self-promotion ick
I’m currently reading Let Them by Mel Robbins, a pop nonfiction book that’s already ridden a wave of hype (and a smaller wave of skepticism). I’ll admit it: I love it. And surprisingly, Robbins dives into this exact issue.
When her public speaking career started taking off, she found herself hesitating to post about it on her social media accounts. What would people think? Wouldn’t her friends and family roll their eyes? Weren’t they only there for dog pics and family vacations? Wouldn’t they be thinking, Who does she think she is, is she trying to be some sort of influencer or something?
Of course, if you know the premise of the book (or guessed it from the title), you already know her proposed solution: Let them. Let people think what they’re going to think. (And, spoiler: They’re probably not even thinking about you nearly as much as you fear.)
Of course, there is an alternate solution to suck it up and Let Them—one that’s a little more actionable and a lot less emotionally taxing: Get help. Hire somebody.
Don't want to do it? Hire it out
Seriously. Budget permitting, you don’t have to go it alone. I find it unfair how many people are doing incredible, meaningful work—who are expected to somehow also become a one-person marketing department using nothing but the internet. It’s overwhelming.
That’s exactly why I started Ampliflora: to help people hand off the burden of self-promotion. Because if you’re out there making change, you shouldn’t also have to become a marketing expert to get people’s attention.
Which brings me back to point #2: Do as I say, not as I do.
Content strategy increases your impact!
I’ll be the first to admit I suffer from a severe case of don’t-wanna-promote-myself-itis. Can I give you great advice on how to structure your blog for maximum impact? Absolutely. Should you look at this [that is, the Amplfilora] blog as a shining example of that? Absolutely not! I’m too busy helping my clients tell their stories to worry much about telling my own.
But I know better. Just like I tell my clients how important it is to talk about what they’re doing if they want to grow their impact—I shouldn't settle for a smaller impact, either.
So let’s both put ourselves out there.
And if you’d like help making that a little less awkward, give me a call. I’d love to procrastinate marketing Ampliflora by helping you advance your mission instead.
OK that wasn’t so hard, was it? You’re not going to unsubscribe just because I reminded you one time that I was trying to run a business over here, right? RIGHT?!?
I’ve worked in marketing and design for 25+ years and I thought there was something wrong with me! Thank you for this.