Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

The subtitle of the writer and artist Austin Kleon’s new book, Show Your Work! is “10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered.” But that subtitle could just as easily be, “How to Self-Promote Without Being a Jerkface.” It’s an incredibly useful and compulsively readable short book about how to use social media and networking if you’re a creative person of any stripe.

Kleon, who gave the Keynote speech at this year’s SXSW, isn’t giving the same tired advice. The key to his method is to continuously share your work, whether or not you think it’s absolutely perfect, or absolutely finished. In fact, he encourages writers, artists, and musicians to pull back the curtain on their work and show the process. “By letting go of our egos and sharing our process,” Kleon writes, “We allow for the possibility of people having an ongoing connection with us and our work, which helps us move even more of our product.”...