This reflective discussion is to help you preparing for your Elevator Pitch.

How to market yourself professionally? Can you use proven business strategy methods and tools (for example, marketing communication mix, or unique selling proposition, or professional services marketing, or digital marketing strategies) for self-marketing and personal branding? How can you use social media marketing for self-promotion?

In your response, please identify the important concepts and ideas that you have learned regarding self-promotion through social media marketing.

Why do you think these concepts, theories, or ideas are important?

How would you apply what you have learned in this and other marketing courses to successfully promote yourself using social media marketing? Please give a few examples.

Also, what question(s) has your learning of self-promotion through social media marketing raised for you? What are you still wondering about?

Below are some additional resources collected for you by Associate Professor John Beckem.

#1: LinkedIn for Self-Promotion

LinkedIn lets you promote yourself to over 800,000,000 people worldwide. It offers a range of tools and strategies to help you turn it into a significant source of professional self-promotion. Simple tasks like completing your profile and connecting to as many people as you can are a good start, but using additional tools like Groups and the ability to search your connection's network can make it an even more powerful tool.

Please watch the following video: LinkedIn for Self-Promotion: Start Your Career | LinkedIn for Students (1:34) Transcript

#2: The Elevator Pitch for Self-Promotion

If you're looking for a job, one of the first tasks on your to-do list should be crafting an ideal "elevator pitch." It's the 30-second speech that summarizes who you are, what you do and why you'd be a perfect candidate. You should be able to deliver your elevator pitch at any time, from a job interview, to a cocktail party conversation, to actually riding in an elevator with someone who might be able to help you land a position.

Please watch this video: The Elevator Speech (2:43). Transcript.

Using something as simple as a webcam or the video capabilities on your mobile device, you can create your own elevator pitch and upload it to a social media website for self-promotion.

Please watch this video: How to Perfect the Elevator Pitch (1:35)

In addition, a message map may help you organize and develop your elevator pitch. Carmine Gallo, Forbes Contributor, writes, "If you can't tell me what you do in 15 seconds, I'm not buying, I'm not investing, and I'm not interested." Here are three steps suggested by Carmine Gallo on how you can pitch anything in 15 seconds including yourself.

Build a message map in 3-steps. A message map is the visual display of your idea on one page. It is a powerful and tool that should be a part of your communication arsenal. Building a message map can help you pitch anything (a product, service, company, idea, or yourself) in as little as 15 seconds. Here is the three-step process to using a message map to build a winning pitch.

Step One. Create a Twitter-friendly headline. The headline is the single overarching message that you want your customers to know about yourself. Ask yourself, "What is the single most important thing I want my listener to know about me." Draw a circle at the top of the message and insert the headline. Make sure your headline fits in a Twitter postno more than 140 characters. If you cannot explain your product or idea in 140 characters or less, go back to the drawing board.

Step Two. Support the headline with three key strengths. The human mind can only process about three pieces of information in short-term memory. Specifically outline three or at most four strengths that you bring to an organization. Draw three arrows from the headline to each of the key supporting strengths.

Step Three. Reinforce the three strengths with stories, statistics, and examples. Add bullet points to each of the three supporting strengths. You don't have to write out the entire story. Instead write a few words that will prompt you to deliver the story. Remember, the entire message map must fit on one page.