How To Make Yourself A Bad-Ass On The InterWeb

Because the Internet is a big place, and because there are so many people who do the same sort of thing, vying for attention and yeah, even your business, the biggest challenge people face is differentiating themselves from the crowd.

This is, by no means, any sort of easy task and in my experience there are a limited number of (tasteful) ways to do this.

1. Ubiquity, which means being everywhere you think there is potential to develop your business. Or to use more euphemistic terms…finding out where the fish are an then fishing there and hope that the repeated exposure will nudge a few lost souls in your direction.

The downside of this activity is that it’s pretty obvious, so a lot of people do it.

2. Brilliance. This is a little harder, the obvious reason being that brilliance is hard to come by. And most of the people who are brilliant are so in demand that they aren’t really anywhere to be seen.

What this does is open up the market to the Very Good, who aspire to be, or are on their way to being, brilliant.

But at the end of the day it’s hard work, because part of becoming perceived as brilliant requires a ton of insights worth sharing and the kind of stamina that a lot of folks simply are not endowed with.

3. Self Promotion Through Testimonials & Case Studies: This is a tactic that is seldom employed by people, because, as I have been told, A) It feels arrogant and self-serving. or B) People just don’t have the material required to do this.

Paradoxically, several of people I know, who employ this tactic actually do quite well with it and are not considered arrogant but aggressive, which, of course, has its own appeal.

About a year ago I did a series of posts entitled “Stuff That Made Me Famous For 15 Minutes” in which I outlined some of the more successful projects I had been involved with over the years.

In all truth I should have kept at this longer than I did, because not doing so was breaking one of my own rules.

Sadly, I was sidetracked by a combination of actual work, and the pure slave labour involved in getting out of Toronto while the real estate market was still insane.

Needless to say, this campaign will be resurrected shortly.

4. Focus On Being Useful: This, for those who have been following me for a while, this actually illustrates my personal philosophy best.

It means, in a nutshell, writing posts that give away a lot of so called trade secrets. This tactic is based on the idea that while people might absorb and appreciate them, relatively few will have the time or inclination to actually do them and even fewer will consider hiring you to do them instead.

5. Write A Book…aka The Ninth Gate Of Hell Option: This is probably the most potent differentiator of all.

Because while you can easily argue that there is a rather substantial glut of books out there on just about every business topic imaginable, the number of authors who actually get their book into a two or three dimensional form is relatively small compared to the number of people busting their humps to differentiate themselves through one means or another, and probably (according to the 80/20 Differential), not doing it right anyway.

Charlene’s Real Live Book

When Charlene Norman

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