What You Need to Stand Out in a Noisy World

From Harvard Business Review, Dorie Clark share great advice on how to stand out in a busy, noisy world.  She offers three key features:  social proof, content creation and your network. She writes: 

Social Proof

Humans, especially busy ones, have a bias toward conserving mental energy. It’s cognitively taxing for them to independently evaluate every person they come into contact with to determine, “Is this person credible?” Indeed, performing that calculation is almost impossible if the person is outside their field of expertise, because they simply may not have enough information to know. That’s why social proof is so critical. Social proof is a heuristic that allows people to judge something — in this case, you — based on your affiliations with brands they already trust. If you went to Harvard, the thinking goes, you must be intelligent; if your book was a New York Times bestseller, it must be good. 

Obviously, these are exceptions (sometimes glaring), but in general, social proof provides shortcuts that are helpful for people most of the time. You can leverage the power of social proof to ensure your ideas are taken more seriously — immediately — by making an effort to align yourself with people and institutions that are known and respected within your industry.

For instance, if you make it a priority to start blogging for a publication that everyone in your field reads, that can be a quick shortcut to credibility. If you’ve worked at an industry-leading company, make sure that it’s prominently featured in your bio and that you periodically share anecdotes highlighting your time there. If you take on a leadership role in a professional association, that sends the signal that your peers respect you enough to select you as their leader. Social proof enables others to “relax” about you; they don’t need to be so vigilant in evaluating your credentials because you’ve already been vetted by others. That primes them to listen to your ideas more carefully and with an open mind.

Read the full story at What You Need to Stand Out in a Noisy World