Are you living life or surviving it? Are you growing, becoming the person you want to be or are you following the herd? The title of this article comes from a Garth Brooks song in which he sings “Life is not tried it is merely survived if you’re standing outside the fire.”
As well as being inspired by the lyrics of that song, this article was also partly inspired by reading this article at ecademy. In it the author writes a lot of statements beginning with “You must…”, all of which are social media “imperatives.”
Yet one of the great opportunities offered by Web 2.0 and 3.0 when it arrives is that is that it’s all about choice. You choose how you want to carve out a presence, if any!
Or to put it another way, to ” embrace it in my own way and own good time and in a way in which I feel comfortable.” Ruth EdwardsStand Out
School, university, work – they all encourage conformity to the point of often stamping out creativity. We’re encouraged to follow the herd, be safe.The flip side of this is that people feel frightened when asked to do something out of the ordinary, or when faced by someone else doing it. They all focus on efficiency, doing things right by conforming. The corporate world depends upon it. Yet we’ve los focus of the more important word, effectiveness, which means doing the right things in the first place. Conformity may have been the right thing to do in the past, but not any more.
In the new decade, conformity and being average won’t cut it any more. There’s a sales and marketing cliche that urges companies to find their Unique Selling Point. This is becoming increasingly important at an individual level. There are millions of blogs; there are tens of millions of networking site profiles. There are often hundreds of people competing for the same jobs. Differentiation is becoming an important word.
How do you Differentiate Yourself?
Look around you – people have been seduced into a “wish a few positive thoughts and you’ll get all you desire” stupor. You will immediately differentiate yourself if you are prepared to:
1. take action to achieve what you want, put in some effort
2. accept responsibility for your life rather than blame everyone/everything else
3. take time to optimise your social media approach. This means having a clear message, being consistent, being true to yourself and taking time to learn how to get your message heard. It also means connecting, engaging and sharing, three interpersonal skills we all use in our face-to face relationships which are just as relevant on-line. Possibly out of habit, so many blogs are clones of each other. So many articles say much the same thing, just adding to the social media noise. Be different!
4. be yourself – I’ll write it until my grey hair turns white: sing your song with your voice! If you are not sure how to do this, take time to read Personal Growth the Benjamin Franklin Way!
5. get a distinctive hair cut and wear clothes that stand out! Sorry Nick, couldn’t resist it, but there is a serious point here. Differentiation comes from within. If Nick didn’t have the congruency, experience and results to back up up his distinctive personal image, it would be meaningless.
What tips would you give people about how to differentiate yourself?
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- Top Ten Tricky Questions to Ask Yourself
- Personal Growth Means Getting Your Priorities Right
- What’s Your Vision For Your Life?
- My Personal Development Theme for 2011 – Focus!
- Social Media – Sometimes Sexy is not Enough!
