Strategies for Professional Self-Promotion

Communicating your results to practice (or getting outside of your typical academic process). While serving as a mentor in a workshop, a Ph.D. student asked one of the best questions I've heard in a while. Rather than asking, "How do I publish in a top journal?" They asked, "What is the best way to communicate my results to practice?" The question caused me to pause. I offered a bit of a glib answer. But, it left me thinking "What strategies can an early career researcher employ to share their work with practice?" As loathe as I am to suggest posting about your work, I encourage early career scholars to learn how to talk about their work online. Here is how I would go about it doing it. First. Engage offline. Attend meetings of practitioners and listen. Attend workshops. Meet-ups. and more. Make friends. Learn the issues they are concerned with. Learn the language they use. Second. Share. Share your work with practice. Take some time to share what you study with your new practitioner friends informally or formally. If you luck out, you can give a short presentation of your work to an applied audience. Third. Evaluate. Ask practice for feedback on a) your problem, b) your question, and c) your findings. See Roseman and Vessey's work on applicability checks for guidance (https://lnkd.in/dh9WtMdm) or one of the 563 papers that cite them for Fourth. Learn. If your contacts in practice find value in what you've done, consider taking your work online in more than a humble brag. Join the conversation on LinkedIn, Reddit, or other places in practice and learn the themes and language used in relevant conversations. Fifth. Establish. Establish an account. Post to it periodically relevant information. Comment from that account. Establish credibility. Focus on your topic of choice. Do not pollute the channel with too many off-topic posts. Sixth. Engage online. Weave your work into the conversation. Weave more than I published a paper into the conversation. Focus on either a) short bites of what you've done or b) crafting a longer blog post or newsletter on the topic. Seventh. Persist. If you want to be part of a space, you must be more than an occasional tourist. Post on the topic consistently. Post about your work. Post about other people's work - positive, negative, and neutral. Become an educated, judicious content creator. Most of all, it will take time if you choose to go down this path and do more than rely on your university to promote your work. It can take months and years to reach a broad audience. But. If you post content in the language of your audience, you will find the connection to practice that you seek! Best of luck!

🌟 Nobody cares about your new certificate or the course you just finished! 😴 There's a better way to do self-promotion and keep your network updated about your growth. 📈 📖 Tell a story. 📚 🎉 The certificate you got is just the resolution of the story. 🏆 🙌 It leaves little room for engagement other than the typical "Congratulations" or "Well done." 🗣️ 📝 If you tell a story, more people will relate, and you'll get higher engagement. 💬 🤔 How do you tell a story about a certificate? 📜 📜 The 5 commandments of storytelling will help you: 📝 1. Inciting Incident: What made you take the course or certificate? 🚀 2. Turning Point Progressive Complication: What are some of the challenges you faced while taking the course? 💪 3. Crisis: Was there a difficult career decision you had to make to make room for attending the course? 🤯 4. Climax: What was your decision? 💡 5. Resolution: You got the certificate! 🎓 📝 If you share a story about the course, I guarantee more people will relate to it and will engage. 📈 🔍 Another question that might help you do self-promotion about the course/certificate in a better way: 🤔 How is your new knowledge going to help the people you serve? 🌐 Here are some examples: 📝 👎 Bad: Just finished this GA4 certificate. 😴 👍 Good: I can now help you better understand the ROI of your digital marketing efforts by leveraging GA4. 💼 💼 Personal branding, and self-promotion, are simple. 🎯 🎯 It's not about you. It's about how you can help others. 🤝 💼 If you want to brag about yourself in a way that feels comfortable and authentic, so that you can start attracting the opportunities you deserve, I can help. 💬 💬 Send me a DM and let's chat about how to turn some of your accomplishments into stories that will help elevate your professional profile. 🚀 Remember, engaging your audience through storytelling and adding some emoticons to your posts can make your content more captivating and memorable! 😊📝 #PersonalBranding #selfpromotion

You can be very competent but poor branding and positioning can make you very poor. The key to turning your expertise into profitability doesn't just lie in your competence; it's also about effective branding and positioning. Being highly skilled is crucial, but if you are not properly positioned where your target audience can find you, your expertise may go unnoticed, underutilized and eventually you are a skillful poor person. Here is a Simple Framework I will suggest you practice if you feel you are skillful and struggling to cash out from your skills. Step 1: Self-Audit Begin by conducting a comprehensive audit of your skills, strengths, and unique selling points. Know what you bring to the table (marketplace). Step 2: Identify Your Audience Decide who can most benefit from your services. Knowing your audience allows you to tailor your brand messaging and positioning more effectively. Step 3: Market Research Study the competition and understand market needs. This will enable you to find gaps you can fill or areas where you can outperform others. This is important. Step 4: Branding Create a professional brand identity. Utilize a consistent color scheme, logo, and tagline across all platforms to establish brand recognition. Step 5: Online Presence Build or update your website (if you can afford) and social media profiles. Ensure they align with your brand and are optimized for search engines to improve visibility. Keep learning on this. Step 6: Content Creation Regularly produce high-quality content that resonates with your audience. Share your expertise through blogs, webinars, or social media updates to position yourself as an authority in your field. This will take time but start. Step 7: Networking Utilize both online and offline channels to network with industry peers and potential clients. Networking not only increases your visibility but also improves the chances of referrals. Who knows you matters. Thank you for knowing me because you are reading this (smiles) By adopting this seven-step process, I think you can elevate your expertise from just being competent to being lucratively recognized. I have coached different professionals and they have been able to achieve this and more. Thus, mastering the art and science of branding and positioning is not just optional; it's essential for financial success in today's competitive marketplace. You want to make money from your skills right? Do this then. I know you learned a few stuff. Leave a comment, tag a friend who needs to see this and do share. I am rooting for your success. Dr. Javnyuy Joybert.

In early December, I had the pleasure of speaking to a large group of students at Yeshiva University about how to optimize your LinkedIn to create an engaging and professional presence. I told these students that the main purpose of creating a professional LinkedIn presence is to build professional connections, discover career opportunities, connect with potential employers, recruiters, or people who might be helpful to you in the future, and establish a clear portrayal of who you are professionally. Here are some of the key takeaways: ☑ Firmly stand behind your professional goal, and curate your profile to that audience by using keywords, a strong title, and updated resume to show your strengths. ☑ Think about what you want your Personal Brand to stand for. What characteristics do you want to convey? Think about traits like reliability, creativity, persistence and how you can convey these implicitly in your profile and posts. ☑ Apply some of the business concepts that you are learning in your classes to your personal brand in LinkedIn. In your posts and comments, for example, use concepts like Value Proposition, which is a statement of what makes your product superior to others. It is the articulation of the Benefits that your product provides to the Customer. You need to be thinking the bundles of Benefits or Value that you can provide to your ‘Customer’ (i.e., your potential employer or key contact). ☑ Always have a pipeline of content ready to be edited and posted. Talk about current events, events occurring in your industry, or things that might interest you and start a conversation with others. ☑ Be sure to engage with others’ posts, join LinkedIn groups, and always be networking! ☑ Show credibility and authenticity by writing a brief but detailed summary of your skills, experiences, and aspirations. ☑ Whichever skills you apply to your profile, request individuals to endorse them. ☑ Always make sure your posts are edited, clear, concise, and palatable for your viewers. ☑ Don’t be afraid to notify some of your connections when you launch a new post, in order to ensure maximum exposure and tell them to Like or Comment on your post. ☑ Keep track of your analytics. This is a great way to gain insight as to what types of individuals engage most with your content. It might seem intimidating at first, but once you find your LinkedIn voice, it becomes much more natural. You just have to take that first leap in discovering how you fit into the professional world of LinkedIn! Special thanks to Sy Syms School of Business for the photography!

Four media interviews. Four different audiences. One surprising pattern. Recently featured in: • StartupNation: "How I Got 300,000 LinkedIn Followers—— And the Secrets Every Founder Should Steal" • SUCCESS.com: "Top Tips on How to Make a Good Presentation" • Forbes: "How To Become The CEO Of Your Own Career" • Goldie Chan’s First in the Door: Going from overlooked to unforgettable Every interviewer asked a version of the same question: "What's the #1 mistake professionals make with visibility?" My answer: They're visible in all the wrong ways. → Posting constantly but saying nothing memorable → Speaking up in meetings but not adding value → Networking everywhere but building relationships nowhere Here's what actually works: 1️⃣ On LinkedIn: Comment before you post. Take the pressure off and add to conversations in a more low-stakes way. 2️⃣ In presentations: Lead with the problem or takeaway, not your credentials or presentation title. Hook them fast. 3️⃣ For your career: Stop waiting for permission. Start documenting your wins weekly. 4️⃣ With presence: It's not about taking up more space. It's about making the space you take up count. The professionals who stand out aren't doing more. They're doing it differently. And that's exactly what I teach in 𝙐𝙣𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙜𝙚𝙩𝙩𝙖𝙗𝙡𝙚 𝙋𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙚𝙣𝙘𝙚—how to get seen, gain influence, and catapult your career without burning out or selling out. Ready to stop being the best-kept secret? Y/N: Do you feel invisible despite working harder than everyone else? * * * * * * 👋I'm Lorraine—keynote speaker and bestselling author. I help rising leaders build an unforgettable presence and stand out at work. Follow for more actionable career tips! ♻️ Reshare if this resonated with you! 📘PS: Want more strategies for building professional presence? Check out 𝙐𝙣𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙜𝙚𝙩𝙩𝙖𝙗𝙡𝙚 𝙋𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙚𝙣𝙘𝙚 here: https://amzn.to/3Hdv79r 

Raise your hand if the thought of self-promotion makes you cringe. ✋ Me too. I have been there. But how do you advocate for yourself in an authentic way without having to “sell” yourself? Here is the approach Julien Sauvage 🥖 shared in our community event last week: 💡 Use third parties to speak up for you. Specifically, he shared three ways to do this: 1️⃣ Have other people speak up for you. For instance, if you worked on a marketing campaign, having other stakeholders in the org tell your manager your campaign was fantastic and help them create impact is even more meaningful than if it just came from you. 2️⃣ Let data speak for you. Data can’t lie. If you implemented a new email marketing strategy and the open and click-through rates went through the roof, then share that data with your manager. The data speaks more powerfully than subjective measures of success. 3️⃣ Have external parties speak for you. For instance, if you created new positioning and messaging, and analysts (like Gartner) and reporters use your new positioning and lingo, then it speaks volumes of the impact you have created. I was pleasantly surprised and relieved to hear that even at his level, Julien Sauvage 🥖 has trouble talking about his accomplishments. As an immigrant as well, I fully relate to the initial shock at the more “self-promotional” culture of most US companies, which tends to favor employees who are more extroverted and like to self-advocate. But, the great news is that you can still be your true self and grow in your career, as Julien has shown. If you are looking for valuable, authentic insights, definitely follow Julien! ❓ What’s something that worked for you to get ahead? What would you add? #productmarketing #careergrowth #leadership #saas #leadership