Build A Community

One of the things you need when you're starting to promote things is that you have to have people to whom you can promote things. I don't care if it's something as simple as your friends on Facebook, you need to have people that you can tell that you're doing something. I don't care how complicated or how simple it is; you need to spread the word and you can't spread the word if it's just you. If the only people person you can be sure to get in contact with is basically just you and you alone, then there's no real sense in promoting anything because obviously nobody else is really going to pay attention to you. 

However, by building a community, you create a support crew, you create people that will occasionally have your back and if you're having problems you can actually access advice. But more importantly, when you start doing promotion you've got people to whom you can promote whatever it is. You can go on to their Facebook pages and say, "What's up, here's what I'm doing." You can go into your LinkedIn and go, H"ey, this is going to help you check me out."

The key is that you've got to have some sort of community in order to spread the news to. And you've got to take the steps in order to build that community up. You've got to put a little bit of effort into it; this isn't something that you're going to start and go on to something else, and you have to constantly maintain it. You've got to figure out ways to say, "Hey, I'm alive!" You've got to check in with other people and you have to occasionally say "happy birthday" or "congratulations on a new job". 

The bottom line is that if you really are serious about promoting whatever you're trying to promote, then your first step should be to build a community that you can promote to, or you won't have one when you need them later on.