How Do You Separate Yourself From the Competition?
Read more about: Online Marketing, Success Thinking
|
Stumble it! |
Delicious | 
Kirtsy | 
Digg
2
Comments
Being remarkable is one of the central keys to having a successful business. But how do I make myself remarkable?
As a coach, consultant and business advisor I get this question all the time. The answer is simple - do something that’s worth people remarking about.
In other words - do something a little different than everyone else. Doesn’t matter what it is, really. Just show yourself to be unique.
For instance, as a blogger, go out of your way to find great posts to link too. Then, go to the posts you link too and leave a comment. Then, once you’ve published your post, email the owner of the post you linked to and let them know you loved their post and just published something about it on your own blog. Then, go and Stumble the post you linked too - giving the blog owner another reason to pay attention to you.
In business, it’s the same way - find something that sets you apart; something that gets you noticed. And don’t be afraid to be calculated. The spontaneity can come from the responses, conversations and relationships that build from your efforts.
And think outside the box (I know I wrote about this expression recently, so forgive me for using it). You don’t just have to find that one, special something in your business that will draw people’s interest. It doesn’t have to be that difficult. You don’t have to send your prospect a thank you letter in a lime green envelope (though that would be something people would remark about, now, wouldn’t it?).
Rather, think of how you can make an impression. An impression a feeling or opinion about something. It’s also a mark made on a surface - like the impression a your body makes when you fall into the snow. Except the surface you want to leave an impression on is their mind or even their heart.
If you’re running a business and if you’re interacting with people, you have plenty of ideas and opportunities to do something remarkable - something worth remarking about. Just give something a try and see how it goes. Seth didn’t come up with the idea of the purple cow overnight. And you likely won’t either. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.
So what’s your purple cow?
100 Total TweetBacks: (Tweet this post)
: -Thomas 07/03/09 07:42pm
![](http://twitter.com/home?status=rt:+@<link type="image/png" rel="image" href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/twitter_production/profile_images/178655056/txtvox_square_normal.png"/>+-Thomas)
Read more about Online Marketing, Success Thinking
Sparkplugging Founder Wendy Piersall is dang passionate about helping people start & grow a business while maintaining life balance (somehow). 
Kelly McCausey is an internet marketer, blog publisher, podcaster
and web business coach. Host of 
Bill Parlaman is owner of 
![](http://twitter.com/<link type="image/png" rel="image" href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/twitter_production/profile_images/178655056/txtvox_square_normal.png"/>){kind=link}
Great post Dawud. I’m not much of a business guy, but I definitely set goals and try to run my artistic endeavors as though they were a business.
Most importantly, I think it’s important to set goals in relationships (especially with spouses). I think these often get overlooked, and it’s just a plain old fact that the better our personal relationships are, the better our work and business runs.
Great post!
Cory Huff’s last blog post..Unlearning Part 3: Experimenting
Hi - Great post. I have tried many things to stand out - some of them have worked and some have been a flop.
We did send customers sweets, just small items in orange envelopes. But we stopped doing that because one month, we didn’t realise the Royal Mail had changed the postage rules. And our customers wound up having to pay the extra. So, we wound up sending everyone stamps to compensate.
We’ve tried so many things - eg, giving gingerbread or chocolates after we’ve finished a job, mailing snippets out of newspapers that our customers may be interested in etc.
Instead of sending thank you cards, we send a postcard thanking our customer for being “Customer of the Week.”
We try to come up with new things all the time, but usually a number of small things seem to work best, rather than one huge thing.
Catherine L’s last blog post..Are Criminals Better Entrepreneurs?