Personally, I find that self promotion can be rather distasteful when I see it going on. It's something of a necessity to survive though, in a lot of trades. I have two trades, high end furniture making and tree work. The first one really requires a certain amount of self promotion, putting out a degree of "pleasant scent", to have what are generally wealthy people come looking, and in a country where there isn't very much understanding of what people might be looking at when considering purchasing, having them like me first is pretty important to get the ball rolling. It took me a long time to understand that, because I'm of the opinion that the work speaking for itself should be the main thing. I naively once thought that it was the only thing. I just generally feel uncomfortable with self promotion, especially when i see that a lot, if not the majority of craftsmen that are really into it, I don't see their stuff as being that good, the hype is greater than the reality. "Smoke and mirrors", as my brother used to say, another craftsman. When you put your heart and soul into something, it seems there isn't much of yourself left over to go yapping about it.
Both Reg and August with their vids and such, I guess could be said to be exhibiting a degree of self promotion. I can't know what their total ambition is in making those vids. When I say a degree of self promotion, I mean when using the descriptive in a broad sense. I don't think that educating is really self promotion, but there also might be that other content contained within it, perhaps inadvertently. If I might take the liberty of saying, I don't find Reg's or August's "self promotion", distasteful at all, if there is indeed self promotion there, they both do it in a contained style. At this forum in particular they both understand that they are talking to other professionals. That's a little different from how you best communicate with the general public about what you do. I've often considered "restraint" to be a real essential quality to have, with a lot of application in different parts of life. Highly skilled and also restrained is a combination that I really can appreciate, I think it reflects humility and intelligence, both important human qualities.