With Google Scholar being so easy to access these days (compared to other citation indices that you had to get from the library and look up one article at a time), getting your work cited becomes more important than ever for things like promotion and tenure.
Unfortunately doing good work isn’t enough if people aren’t aware of it. On top of getting things published in good journals, you also have to get your stuff out there so people know about it and recommend it to other people.
How do you do that?
If you’re in a field that allows you to put up working papers prior to publication, then do that! You can put it up on SSRN and/or on your own webpage concurrently with sending it to a journal. (Or sooner! Though do be careful about having a version you’re happy with posted and make sure you’re not in an area where people steal ideas from each other prior to publication.)
You can also send your paper to people that you cite– people are generally very nice when junior people do this and sometimes they even send back helpful comments and encouragement.
Make sure you cite other people and other important papers– google scholar and other indexes often let people know when they’ve been cited and if your paper looks interesting, they may look at it and keep it in mind the next time they do work.
Make sure you cite yourself, if appropriate. I had a junior colleague who at one point had more publications than citations. That should not be! Not after your first two publications, at least. Google scholar doesn’t care if citations are self-citations, though some indices do keep track of that. In any case, citing yourself appropriately means that people reading any one of your papers can find other relevant papers of yours without having to look you up personally. That means they’ll be more likely to add multiple relevant papers of yours to their next literature review.
Also: get out there and submit your stuff to conferences. Even if you don’t get in, the committee will have read your abstract at the very least and might remember it then next time they have a student doing something similar. Even better is getting accepted and having people see your work in progress.
Have a short elevator pitch for whatever project you’re working on– once conferences are back in person, people like to ask junior people what they’re working on, and if you have a short summary of something interesting, they may remember it and you.
Grumpy Academics: How do you get more citations? How do you get your work and your name out there?