Grow your audience through tasteful self-promotion. (But provide value first!)

If you shy away from self-promotion, you'll lose out on growth. Just do it tastefully: never ask for favors without earning the goodwill of your readers.

@harrydry of Marketing Examples could hardly be more direct with his self-promotional requests. Here he is at the end of one of his articles: "I won't lie, this one took a while to write. If you're feeling generous please like or retweet the post on Twitter. It really does help :)". This worked! Harry believes it brought him dozens of extra likes and retweets. But it only worked because he had already generated tons of goodwill with his readers. And how'd Harry pull that off? By working his ass off to write content that solved peoples' problems. So don't take any shortcuts. But don't be afraid to ask for favors either.