How can an entrepreneur most effectively market a company through their personal efforts?

Off-line: Show up at your industry conferences as a speaker, presenter and join  discussion panels. Be seen as a leader in the industry. On-Line: Have a relevant industry blog that highlights the new issues, challenges that are facing your industry (you are not selling here, rather providing relevant information to your prospects, leads, customers, VCs, market analyst, share holders etc). Social Presence: Leverage LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook to add value to your partners, customers by providing relevant information, contacts etc. Example: One of my customers actively helped promote on-campus hiring for interns in his alma-mater and as a result of his visible passion for his company and alma-mater he invariable was able to attract the best talent which resulted in his company generating some tremendous ideas and work from interns and fresh grads. Many of these interns returned for full time positions. Tell your story as passionately as you in each instance and truly add value to each interaction.

A content marketing strategy - ie: a blog, an email newsletter, and regular contributions to the blog with the whole system tied together as a lead generation machine. Allows individuals in the company to make contributions (even developers) without having to be marketing savvy. http://www.getspokal.com/what-is-inbound-marketing/ http://www.getspokal.com/top-11-most-powerful-content-marketing-examples-by-small-businesses/

I'd go for Guerrilla marketing/PR-- like attending conventions and trade fairs in real time spells wonders.  I've been meeting great people in this Lean Startup meetings in the real world where I get to meet like minds and tweeple I never imagine I'd meet online.  I'd say don't underestimate face-to-face meetings even if it's easier to do all things online - even an hour over a hot cup of coffee can give you collaborative business opportunities which take time to find when you try social networking sites, especially when you're new with zero fans or followers.  That's my take.

Show up at industry events, go out and meet people at meetups, volunteer to do presentations for college groups, join social media-- the big three are twitter, facebook, and linkedin.  Join professional associations and show up to help people.  Go out and meet people and try new things.

Good suggestions above. I think the key is for the CEO or GM has to  "eat their own dog food". This is a term I use to describe being authentic and living the values and behaviour of the brand. They need to embody and be the role model internally firs before they take on any external marketing effort. The reason I say this is it is so rarely done. If don't correctly then the company has all it's employees communicating the brand and that is really special. Get the internal right. Get everyone on the same page and internalise the brand. Then the suggestions above will be compelling and authentic.