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Self Promotion

My former colleague P was complaining the other day that she hates all social-media because its all about self-promotion and she is too old for it. P has come out of retirement to try something new - she does advisory services in her area of expertise and enjoys work much more than she ever did before. Her income is no longer required by the family. Kids are all grown-up, living their own independent lives - its just her and her husband who does some freelance work post-retirement. They organize their lives around the schedule of their grandkids and finally feel free as P  puts it. This is certainly not the time or phase of her life where she feels any need to broadcast her career to the world. 

That conversation for some reason reminded me the Seth Godin rule for effective marketing - if the first ten you share the news with don't share it on, then its time for a do-over. 

You can no longer market to the anonymous masses. They’re not anonymous and they’re not masses. You can only market to people who are willing participants. Like this group of ten.

I don't know if that's true anymore. Influencer marketing would not exist if it were. These folks have legions of followers none of whom them they know - so they are anonymous to the marketer and certainly their count far exceeds ten. The only part of the rule that holds is they are "willing participants" and just that apparently makes the process work. If P were to tell a group of willing participants how a day in her post-retirement life looks like, I think many could draw inspiration from it and maybe she would not feel like she was self-promoting

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