Am I a shameless promotion whore or are you just being unnecessarily negative?

A few have told me that I can be a little pushy when it comes to promoting projects I am involved with. I have been called a shameless promotion whore. I have wondered if that is a good or a bad thing. When I offer to trade profile pimps on Plurk to increase my friend count I am told that I am being tacky. Why? Isn’t it all about the social? Isn’t it all about the contacts? Now some say that it is more about quality than quantity. Well that is all fine and good, but how do you know they are quality until you give them a chance to interact with you? So I just add everyone and make my decision from there. Now I may not ever get the friend count of people like Robert Scoble, Leo Laporte, or even A Computer Pro, but the more people I get following me, the better chance I have of getting the reaction I want. What is it that I want? Well that depends on the post. Sometimes I might ask a tech question. So then I get the tech savvy contacts replying.  Next I might ask how many people are fans of Big Bang Theory and a different group of people reply. Then maybe I make a post asking people to not forget to up vote stories on HAH and the hard rock and metal fans respond. I have several sides to myself and so I have a ton of online friends to accommodate that. Ok, sure I will end up with a majority of those people never respond at all. However, I might make a new friend that I would not have made if I was more reserved. So is it bad to be a self promotion whore?  I don’t think so!

Now there is a bad side to it all. Because so many perceive it as being a negative thing, I have a hard time getting people to respond sometimes. So what is the solution? Don’t promote and watch my websites not grow or promote and be called a shameless promotion whore. I think I will pick self promotion. Why do I care so much? Because I am currently slowly killing myself with a job I hate. I need a tech job and if that tech job can be heading up a website I am passionate about that’s even better! Many of the people that slam me for being a shameless self promotion whore are either stay at home housewives, college people that don’t have to work, or people that have jobs that keep them at a computer all day. Nothing wrong with any of those, but they have more time to put into this whole social networking and social media thing. I get in trouble at work if I get caught on the computer. So I have to work harder at the self promotion thing to get anything out of it at all. Hence the reason why I get so pissy when certain people do things that make people question my motives for posting promotional messages on Twitter, Plurk, or any other networking site.

So before you look down your nose at any self promotion whore, ask if there might be some very honest and legit reason behind it. Ask if you are just kicking someone down who is just trying to get ahead.