(By Loyd Ford) The world moves faster than it used to move. More than this, people find themselves busy much more than in the past. The pandemic has changed a lot about hiring, promoting and eliminating employees. Of course, the world is always changing. So, how do you promote yourself effectively in today’s world while not being out of step as only a self-promoter?
Everybody is not the same and all radio companies are not the same either. However, one thing you can count on is that your broadcast company – as good or bad as they may be judged to be – is unlikely to feel responsible for managing your career.
In fact, all companies with very few exceptions, would look at your career and what happens around promoting it to be your problem. The companies have enough problems managing today’s environment, debt, competitive environment, struggle with managing human assets and staying relevant to local customers.
So, how do you properly promote your own career while doing an excellent job for your employer? Here are some steps to get you thinking about how you see yourself, your career and how to effectively promote your ambitions:
- If you don’t promote you, who is it you think is going to be responsible to do it? Right. Time to get and stay busy with the other side of your career: Promoting the future you.
- If you are still thinking old school in any way about self-promotion being bragging or pumping yourself up above others, stop it right now. In fact, it’s critical that you think of your self-promotion as an essential daily step in promoting yourself as a personal brand. You should be thinking about this promotion in terms of internally (with your boss, your company, your co-workers) and externally (in your industry). People are busy; make certain your accomplishments are being seen: Stand in the light. Keeping your boss in the loop, networking with others and making certain that a variety of people can see what you are accomplishing is getting and staying top-of-mind. This is essential for better employment and advancement health in what is essentially 2021.
- Know who you are, what you are best at accomplishing. It is essential to know what you do best and what you can become known for before promoting yourself. Be careful to monitor the feedback you do get. People will often tell you with some consistency the things you do well. Know where you shine and try to have a clear picture of the value of the things you do well and how they balance in the overall job. Think about the teams you work on, projects you’ve participated in and accomplishments where you have shined. Those are all areas where you can actually do two things: Promote you and spread the love (appreciation) to others on your team.
- Focus your updates on relevant updating of critical projects and accomplishments that really moved the needle. If you do this well, you will be focusing your communications on projects where you are involved, innovations and accomplishments where your natural value shines. You don’t have to make the focus about you. Focus on what the team is doing, has done, is working on so that you come across as a team player who is positive, upbeat and dialed in for making the company successful.
- No one accomplishes anything alone. This is so important. Make certain in your information about accomplishments you share the stage and spotlight with others and highlight them. This further shows that you lift others to the finish line, share glory, promote encouragement of others. Go further than bragging on others; go out of your way to reward others on your team. This will come back to you again and again in ways that propel your career. Recognize team members in meetings and in other public ways that help you grow positive momentum around you as someone who is always helpful.
- Look for ways that work with your own talent to help yourself to be seen as an expert in your industry. This is difficult for a lot of people and that doesn’t matter. You should overcome it if this is a concern for you. You want to be seen as someone who reaches out to others, mentors others, helps on a wider scale. Think about a blog or creating some kind of content that can help others, encourage others.
- Reach out often to other areas of the business to be helpful. You have a few extra minutes in your day? Fill it by talking to other people in your company about their projects or just to get a better understanding of their challenges. See where they may need some help that you might supply. Just by doing this, you will pick up additional knowledge and empathy for other employees and other parts of the company as well as picking up friends and people who can support your rise.
- Try to make a new contact in the industry regularly (every week, twice a week, whatever you are comfortable with). I’ve said this a lot, you cannot know enough people in broadcast media today. Expanding the people who know you is critical to creating more potential opportunities and more people who are aware of who you are, what your great skills are and how your accomplishments might work well in other companies and situations important in the future.
The business world today is filled with business people on the move, stressed, under pressure and trying to figure out what the important things are to keep their business producing, moving ahead. That hasn’t changed. What has changed is the speed of the tasks we all have to get accomplished. That means you must do more regularly to stand out and move ahead. But you can do it.
Someone said this to me just the other day: Radio may not be as much fun as it used to be, but it’s still a fun business. I bet it is even more fun when you get recognized and promoted. Those things don’t happen by accident.
No matter what you have going on, I’m for you positively promoting yourself in this industry. If you don’t get anything out of this article except that you are the only one responsible for promoting yourself and your accomplishments and keeping your career on the way up, that will be enough. However, use these basics and build your strategy to really keep your career going into the future.
Loyd Ford consults radio stations, coaches personalities, and provides behavioral and strategic programming to radio that propel ratings (and revenue) with RPC. Reach him anytime. 864.448.4169 or [email protected].
