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Dan Miranda / @timecommander

“The original is always worth more than the copy.”

As the quote hung across the room of my classroom, my mind started to drift away from the statistics handout I was given. First, I thought about the social situations that occurred to me throughout the day.

Then I thought more about how it affected marketing, branding and life. By the time the class was out, I already had a new post formulated in my brain. Here is precisely what I thought during that time:

The world is a fairly large place, with a fairly large population. Some people say 6.77 billion, I say a lot of people. Now I know I can’t possibly imagine that many people, I can hardly imagine one million people, but I’m sure you’re older and more wise. These people all bring forth new ideas and different experiences. As I hope you know at this point in your life, everybody is different.

The one who follows out of that 6.77 billion is wasting their time. That is why “following” is thought of as so degrading because the one who follows is the one who gives in to the others’ beliefs. You aren’t living by your own values once you start following.

Now I’ve been talking a lot about being a leader, but what exactly is a leader? John Quincy Adams said it well, “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”

Contrary to popular belief, there doesn’t have to be a follower for every leader. Leaders are far and few between, but that doesn’t mean they have to be. I’m not going to give you a “10 Ways To Be A Leader” post or anything like that because all of my points would come from the excellent book “How To Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie.

How does this relate to branding yourself?

Because there are so many of us out there, you would think that we would want to show everybody about our uniqueness. While sometimes the case, it doesn’t always happen that way.

On the internet, it’s important to make yourself as unique as possible. Why? Because I’m sure the average Twitter user checks out at least twenty-five different profiles each day. If you don’t stand out they aren’t going to click that follow button you beg they click. Therefore advertising yourself as crazy is probably going to be much more profitable than somebody who advertises themselves as boring. Standing out from the crowd is not easy, but here are three tips to do just that:

1. Be your best self. I could have said to be yourself, but in all honesty, being yourself probably won’t make a lasting impact on someone. But I’m sure once you give an extra hand, once you reach out to that person, they will remember you and what you did for them.
2. Throw yourself out there. Be open about who you are. You will surely get respect and it will help let you stand out as a marketer.
3. Do things you normally wouldn’t. If anything gets an emotion out of anything, it’s definitely shock. Shock allows you to make a quick appearance, and when the shock gets out of the persons system, I promise they will remember what scared them.

Showing off your “unique” side is important to make a lasting impact on your consumer.

Take advantage of it today by following the tips or doing something you know will improve your brand’s value.