Trying to stand out in a crowd is not always the best way to stand out.
First, a story
I was chatting with an old friend of mine recently about his dating struggles. Or rather, struggles about his lack of serious dating.
Now in his late 30’s, single and wanting very much to start a family, he feels the pressure mounting as time creeps on. As a result, he’s looking for new ways to meet that special someone.
Last year, he told me, he signed up to a major dating site and spent 3 months browsing and meeting site members whose profiles showed that they had similar interests. Unfortunately, the 3 months went by without him meeting anyone significant which, although he didn’t say so, only makes the situation seem more desperate.
However, when I asked him why he thought it didn’t work out, he responded with these key insights to dating websites:
- How good you look in your profile picture will decide whether people continue reading your profile
- When a better-looking person is potentially just one click away, you need to look great to keep people from clicking too quickly
Although he’s a decent-looking guy, he didn’t stand much of a chance in that situation.
So why am I telling this story?
If you want success, put yourself in a place where you’re likely to have success.
My friend’s experience with the dating site taught him that to find his wife, he will need to go places, online and offline, where:
- his strengths will stand out relative to the others around him, and
- his strengths will be most attractive to the woman he’s hoping to meet
Similarly, many people work too hard to build their personal brand without getting results that match their efforts, and all too often the reasons are the same ones that frustrated my friend’s online dating adventures.
Sound familiar?
Here’s how you can turn the situation around.
3 ways to improve your chances of personal branding success
1) Know your strengths – don’t pay lip service to this, actually spend some time thinking about what you’re good at and make a list. Writing forces people to think. Focus on your comparative strengths e.g. lots of people read well, but how many people read 10 pages per minute?
2) Find where you’re more likely to have success – in what context, at which place, on what Facebook page, are your strengths most likely to make you stand out?
3) Build your strengths – take what’s great about you and make it greater, so that even as others’ personal brand grow around you, your personal brand continues to stand out and above.
Author:
Jacob Share, a job search expert, is the creator of JobMob, one of the biggest blogs in the world about finding jobs. Follow him on Twitter for job search tips and humor.
