A Beginners Guide to Getting Noticed
There are around 7 billion people on Earth. Do you notice everyone around you? Who stands out, and why? At work, or anywhere else, getting noticed is often important. How do we get noticed in an ever crowded world?
There are 4 principles that can assist in getting noticed. They all stem from one root.
The very first thing to build the foundation of getting noticed on is caring. Sounds tenuous, but an explanation follows. The root of the principles to follow is caring. Not caring about getting noticed specifically, but about everything else. In fact, caring too much about getting noticed can often put forth a needy and deterring energy, that gets us noticed for the wrong reasons. Our reasons must be right, so where do we start? What do we care about? We should be doing a lot more caring as a species, but to be specific we should emphasize the following.
Caring about how we approach and execute our responsibilities. Caring about how we present ourselves. Caring about how we interact with, and treat others. Caring about the well-being of others — including those we do not see eye to eye with. Caring about the well-being of the environment we inhabit. Caring about our work. Caring about our bodies. Caring about kindness Caring about life.
We should care more about everything. People notice when you care because most of us do not. So, when looking at the first element to getting noticed the level of care we show is undoubtedly where to start.
What else will help us get noticed? Maybe we are an artist. Maybe we are a new business, with a cutting edge product. Maybe we are just someone trying to get a beautiful person to pay attention to us. Whoever we are, getting noticed has 4 key elements. Assuming we already care enough, what else will help us?
Working harder, being different, eye contact, and learning. These four elements are imperative.
Working harder? “I already work hard!” you say. Perhaps. But getting noticed in a crowded and attention deficit market is not going to spontaneously happen. Work must be done to even be in a position to be noticed. To be noticed, do not just work hard, work the hardest. Dedication to the work can gain attention simply for the fact that most people aren’t committed. They aren’t putting their best effort in. When you show up and work your hardest good things happen. You might even get noticed in the act of outworking those around you. But, the ultimate payoff is that by working harder you start to surpass those who aren’t paying attention. Soon your body of work is so honed that they have to notice. You reach the point where the process leads to a superior product, and people take note.
Being different is so important to us getting noticed that it could easily vie for the most important aspect along with care. Caring is still the root because it leads to being different. Standing out is another way of saying getting noticed. We are oblivious to the symmetrical, but the odd always catches our eye. When we see 1000 people walking in dark suits, the man in the white tuxedo is noticed by all. Our product could be different. Our technique could be different. Our attitude could set us apart. Being different is the best way to market ourselves. Why pay attention to sameness and the familiar? Boldness gets noticed. Standing out demands we capitalize on our uniqueness. If we do not understand what already makes us different from others, we can create it. Deciding what our specialty will be. Looking at what everyone else is doing and then doing what they aren’t.
Eye contact is often under-looked, not overlooked. We notice when someone is unafraid to gaze into our eyes while they talk. It conveys honesty, confidence and even power. It might be hard to get your product to make eye contact, maybe it’s a vacuum cleaner or bag of granola. What then? How can eye contact help an inanimate object get noticed? Two ways. The people that are involved in the creation and sales of the product can practice honest eye contact with everybody. Speak for your product. Stand behind it and look people in the eye when you tell them about it. That is the first way. Then second way is to take eye contact as a metaphor for being direct. The product itself may not have eyes, but whoever is purchasing it does. Like being different, when we are direct in intent and straightforward, we get things noticed. Make the product say “look at me!” through its design, quality, and integrity.
Learning is essential. Whether it’s getting noticed, or anything else in life, we cannot stop learning. When it comes specifically to getting noticed, there are some definite things that learning can help us achieve. We can learn what is not working. How are we trying to get noticed, and is it effective? If not we can learn an alternative. Learning helps us when we learn what people like. People notice what they like. We can learn how to showcase ourselves or our art that way. Learning also helps when we apply it far and wide. Understanding many unrelated fields or skills can make us extremely valuable and creative. People will notice our diverse knowledge base, and how we use it to our advantage. People will notice that we do not act like we know everything because we understand the depth of what we do not know. But, we are learning.
Getting noticed can happen for many reasons, but when we decide we want to get noticed we can increase our odds. Caring is a quick way to get noticed — without that much competition. Working hard leads us to higher levels of competition, but is still integral to our aim. Differentiating ourselves is arguably the essence of getting noticed. Looking directly into the eyes has power and prestige, we notice it. Acquiring and applying new knowledge and wisdom never fails to pay off. It might take longer, but when we demonstrate a lifetime’s worth of learning people notice.
Now we can go after the scarce resource of attention with a multi-pronged approach.
This is the 57th installment of Writing Wednesday. For this edition, I used a prompt from 642 Things To Write About, by the San Fransisco Writers Grotto. The prompt was “A Beginners Guide To Getting Noticed.”
Let me know what you think!
