How do you deal with feeling disingenuous?

I try to make my shilling as organic as possible. I've found the only way to do this successfully is to mix my self-promotional content in with my non-self-promotional content, and to have far more of the former and far less of the latter.

If you check out the history of my comments on this site, for example, you'll find most of them to be non-self-promotional. I'm just a regular in the community, helping people with their problems. But I do link to my own posts or products in perhaps 15% of my comments — whenever it's organic and appropriate.

Similar story with my posts themselves. In an article [1] I wrote about my work routine a couple weeks ago, I link-dropped one of my products right there in the first paragraph. But not in a distracting, conspicuously self-promotional sort of way. Instead: I a) had something I wanted to say and b) noticed an organic opportunity to use my product in support of the thing I wanted to say.

All that being said, I also just drop self-promotional links sometimes. Especially on Twitter lately. The upshot here is really that there are multiple approaches you should consider on a case-by-case basis.

[1] Notice this case in point for organic self-promotion?

Try to reframe your mindset as "I really want to help or entertain people, and I have a really great podcast that I think will be great for some (but not all) people. I want to find the right people who will actually benefit from or enjoy listening, and try to explain to them why they should try it out."

Shilling to me is blindly pushing a poor product or pushing the wrong product on the wrong person.

Think about a time when someone gave you a good recommendation (restaurant, book, video game, app), you tried it and it was awesome and you were thankful for the recommendation. The recommender probably thought that it was both good on an absolute level, but also good for you in particular. Try to do that when you promote.

Hope that helps and good luck!

What can you loose? There are so many opportunities lost by not trying things out. We live in an uncertain world where success cannot be predicted. We live in a world where there is not one way of a achieving something but different styles, different audiences and different needs.

If you bring out your podcast and most people hat it, maybe you find somebody who likes it? And if you do not find anybody, maybe you find the issues and adjust. And if this did not work as well, the process itself was fun, right? You said, you love this…

I developed https://exploo.com and put a lot of energy into it, but am realizing that it potentially might not be of interest for anybody. Maybe I believe in something useless for others.

Was it wrong bringing it out because people judge me because of my failures? I do not think so.

I know, this might come a bit dramatic, but we all will die eventually. Do not wait for somebody giving you permissions to do stuff. Life is too short.

I just wrote down my thoughts as they came out. :) You cannot beat your fear by pretending it’s not there. Maybe you can start small. ;)

Wanted to come back to this for anyone still following to link the latest episode of my podcast where we talk about using twitter authentically and avoiding looking/feeling like a grifter. The convo really helped me, maybe it'll help someone else too!
https://www.startuptosomething.com/49

You are caring about people who doesn't care about you at all. After reading other comments, there is nothing much left to say. Maybe you don't even need to plug it. If what you share in here resonates with me I probably make a few clicks to find out about your podcast.

My two cents? Provide value and contribute meaningfully to the world. People will take notice and look into what you offer.

THAT SAID, promotion is obviously very important. The cure for being disingenuous IMO is being very upfront. Make it absurdly clear the you're promoting something. Announce it unabashedly. Tell them why you're doing it and what you want from them. Nobody is going to begrudge somebody doing their work as long as they're transparent about it. It's the slimy/indirect/manipulative/time-wasting marketing that people don't like.

Would it help to reframe the marketing problem from an empathetic viewpoint.

For example, I've got a great show that I love and I think fills a gap in this world. I know that there are people out there who would benefit from this show. Unfortunately, I can't target all of them directly, so I have to market the show. What would I say, if I could, directly to this target audience to get them to try this show?

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Personally, I've struggled and continue to struggle with authenticity and I've found that by refocusing on the actual problem that my target audience/customer has, I'm viewing it from the lens of how I can help them and hopefully that can help me churn out even better content or products.

have you tried cutting your podcast into small clips and uploading them to youtube and tiktok? i feel like that would be a lot easier, since it's basically the users themselves deciding whether they'll give your podcast a shot or not after seeing one of your clips.

I don't know where you're currently sharing your podcast (twitter?), but algorithm-centered social platforms might be some kind of solution to your problem.