The difference between genuine field recognition and self-promotion, as I came to understand it

Spent time early on trying to generate more "recognition" through my own promotional efforts (posting about my own work more actively, reaching out to be featured places), and eventually realized this was working against the actual goal — the criteria are fundamentally asking about recognition the field extends to you, not visibility you generate yourself. The distinction that clarified things for me: a feature article someone else decided to write about my work is genuine evidence of recognition. A post I wrote myself about my own work, however well it performed, isn't the same kind of evidence, even if it technically reaches an audience — it's self-promotion, not third-party recognition, and a reviewer can generally tell the difference. This shifted my effort away from trying to generate more visible content myself and toward doing work substantial enough that others would independently choose to write about or recognize it — a slower, less directly controllable path, but the one actually aligned with what the criteria are asking for.