Shameless self-promotion is a must in your marketing efforts, but it’s easy to fall into a lull. Have you noticed that your self-promo efforts yield little, or worse, no response?

Let’s guess: you dove headfirst into your self-promo strategy, right? You made the most of your networks, sharing your blog or website content on a frequent basis to keep things interesting.

If your content was value-packed, it was shared at a decent rate at first because you enriched readers’ lives. However, after a while, your hook got no bites.

There’s a very important reason for that. But there’s a way out of the funk.

Your self-promotion gets no bites because you don’t pass the megaphone.

While self-promotion is very necessary for your business, exclusive self-promo becomes redundant and vain in people’s eyes. People are curious for new and relevant content, but when the only content you share comes from you, they see the pattern and start to tune you out.

In order to succeed, you’ve got to follow the 13th Law of Power.

“When asking for help, appeal to people’s self-interest, never to their mercy or gratitude.” – Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power

In short, one hand washes the other, and two wash the face.

In order to guarantee your content promotion success, you’ll need to share your megaphone.

Include other people’s content in your social network updates. Visit sources like LinkedIn Today, Entrepreneur, Forbes, Black Enterprise, or Mashable for relevant news articles that you feel will add value to your readers’ lives. Not only will you benefit your readers, you’ll also do the content author a favor by sharing his or her link.

That’s especially true for thought leaders and influencers, who you really want to promote your work for you.

Internet marketing experts (including Derek Halpern and Danny Iny) agree that the most effective way to gain a thought leader’s attention is to share his content with your network, leave comments on his blog, and comment on his social networks (or ask intriguing questions).

If you really want to go in deep, research your desired target to learn the pain points that you can relieve, and offer to relieve them yourself.

In other words, engage them.

That all sounds like a long process…but that’s because it is.

Advertising can have a powerful short-term term effect with the right visuals and marketing copy, but what happens when the ad comes down?

It’s forgotten in a matter of days.

Conversely, social engagement offers the long-term benefit of establishing relationships.

When you forge friendships, you create new evangelists: they’ll be more willing to share every new thing you publish.

Furthermore, tapping thought leaders is an inevitably long process because they’re incredibly busy and have large audiences already.

It’s a tough pill to swallow, but quality marketing takes a while anyway, yes?

If you want to learn more about social sharing and engagement, check out these links:

How to Use Hashtags in Social Media Marketing (FreelanceSwitch)

How to Meet New People Who Want To Help Your Business and Career (Social Triggers)

7 Tips for More Effective Social Media Marketing (FreelanceSwitch)

How to email influential people—and get responses FAST (plus new free download) (Social Triggers)

Share this post with your networks. They’ll definitely find it useful. 🙂

_{Image by Tina Mailhot Roberge (vervex).}