INTRODUCTION
YOU’RE SITTING AT your desk when, for some reason, you find yourself thinking about your best friend from fifth grade. You realize that it’s been years since you last spoke. Just as you begin tripping down memory lane, feeling guilty about losing touch with someone who was, at one time, so important to you, an e-mail arrives in your inbox. The first lines read:
Hey, I know this might sound weird, but I was just sitting here at work when you popped into my mind out of nowhere. I can’t believe it’s been so long! How’ve you been since fifth grade?
I don’t care how jaded or cynical you are—when you’re randomly thinking about someone and that person’s name suddenly materializes in your inbox, you’re going to experience a moment of childlike wonder. For a full second or two after that e-mail appears, you’ll contemplate whether you can control space-time with your mind. (Once you realize how ridiculous that sounds, you’ll focus on more plausible questions, such as whether you’re being Inceptioned.)
As humans, we’re fascinated by coincidences like this one because they are filled with possibility. Carl Jung believed that such moments of synchronicity reveal hidden truths about the universe. Others interpret coincidence through the lens of religion, spirituality, or science. Even the most skeptical interpretation—that an unexpected yet meaningful occurrence merely represents a statistical improbability—is still based on the desire to find an explanation.
When the person you’re thinking of suddenly appears, is it a message from the universe? Or is it simply random chance?
I have no idea. What I do know is that there is tremendous potential in the statement “Oh, my God! I was just thinking of you!”
In fact, most of my success in business—and in life—hinges on that phrase and the magical feeling that comes with it. Because if you can get the right people to think of you at the right times, you can accomplish great things.
We process an incredible amount of information every second. So many of our judgments and decisions, from the strategic to the mundane, come down to the information we can call to our conscious minds in an instant. By ensuring that you are top of mind among the people in your networks making those important decisions, you are positioning yourself for success.
For example, let’s say you run a software development company. If potential clients are already thinking about you at the moment they begin looking for a vendor that can deliver software that meets their needs, you are at a distinct competitive advantage. Unlike competing companies that are trying to cut through the noise and the clutter and the trust barriers that slow down sales and partnerships, you are already on top of the potential clients’ mind—and that’s powerful.
It isn’t enough to come to their mind as just another vendor, though. You want them to view you as a partner and a resource that they value and trust. And there, at the intersection of timing and trust, is your opportunity to influence decision makers.
Apply this scenario to current and potential partners, investors, media contacts, and employees. Imagine the impact that widespread top-of-mind status can have on your growth.
In this book, you’ll learn how to engage and position yourself on top of the minds of the people who matter most—so that whenever opportunity arises, they’ll already be thinking of you.
Not long ago, I sent an e-mail to the CEO of a midmarket firm wishing him a happy Thanksgiving. This wasn’t someone I knew particularly well—he and I had met only once, and we had never had a real conversation—but within half an hour, I’d received a reply.
“John, total coincidence. I was literally just thinking about you. My team and I are about to discuss the keynote for our conference next year, and I think you should be the speaker. Interested?”
Strange, right? Was this the universe itself endorsing me as a candidate for this conference’s keynote speaker? Maybe. I mean, after all, the only thing I did to elicit an invitation was wish him a happy Thanksgiving.
But my “Happy Thanksgiving” e-mail didn’t really come from out of the blue. I had sent this man personal greetings on every public holiday for more than a year; this was simply the first time he had responded.
Later, I discovered that he was a regular reader of my Forbes column on leadership, content marketing, and online PR—and he was especially fond of the article in which I named his company’s conference as one of the most important of the year. And, finally, he had actually seen me speak a few months earlier at a different conference.
Over time, my diverse branding efforts had helped me make my way to the top of his mind. That’s not to imply that every time he closed his eyes, he saw my face. (And, truthfully, I probably wouldn’t accept an invitation from such an individual.)
In all seriousness, he probably wasn’t even aware that he had been thinking about me. I imagine it went something more like this: Picture his brain as an office. Because he had regularly been seeing my name attached to things he liked (my columns, the conference speech I gave, and genuine holiday greetings), I wasn’t tucked away in a folder at the bottom of some dark subconscious filing cabinet; I was at the very top of a pile of memories that lay just beneath his conscious mind. When it came time to do the mental work of finding a keynote speaker for his conference, I was one of the easiest memories to retrieve.
See? Nothing as mysterious as the forces of the universe; nothing as manipulative as Inception. All I had to do was be myself and treat him in a way that I’d want to be treated, and everything fell into place.
Sure, this is a simple example, but it represents the essence of this book—as well as my entire business and personal philosophy. I’ve learned that when you make life better for other people and treat them with respect, they appreciate you. And because they appreciate you, they think about you. Cultivate appreciation, and it becomes opportunity.
In this book, you’ll learn how to create opportunity for yourself personally and professionally by developing top-of-mind status among those who matter most to you.
Chapters 1 and 2 describe the major shifts in today’s consumer landscape and why a top-of-mind strategy is essential for achieving competitive advantage for any audience. Chapters 3 through 5 explain how to build an authentic, transparent, and consistent personal brand that serves others just as well as it serves you—because if your brand isn’t genuine, it’s a liability. And in Chapters 6 through 10, you’ll learn how to enrich the lives of your target audience, whoever it’s made up of, through high-quality digital content that builds trust and creates meaningful human connections between your brand and the world.
Through years of experience practicing this philosophy, I’ve learned a lot about what it takes to become top of mind, and I’ve come to rely on content to help me scale my efforts.
You can practice any number of tactics with a top-of-mind mindset, such as your personal interactions or one-on-one communications with different members of your audience. But these habits aren’t scalable. You have only so much time in a day or a week or a year, and you can be in only one place at a time. You cannot possibly interact personally with each individual member of your audience with whom you’d like to build trust. It’s just not physically possible.
Building those relationships is still important, but if you can’t rely on individual interactions to develop them, you have to practice another tactic—and that’s where content comes into the picture.
So if at any point in this book you start to wonder why I reference digital content, it’s because much of the success I’ve seen has come from creating written content and then distributing it to audiences online, interacting with followers and influencers on social media, and speaking at events.
These types of content have been a core part of my top-of-mind strategy because they give me the chance to build trust and relationships with an audience I would otherwise never have been able to reach at once. They’ve also helped me grow personally and professionally.
Because this top-of-mind practice has worked so well for me and others I’ve worked with, I want to share my stories, my lessons, and my tactics with you so that you, too, might better understand the unique role of content in placing you top of mind. Once you learn why and how a top-of-mind strategy works to create opportunity, you’ll learn exactly how digital content can help you earn, maintain, and scale that opportunity—and you’ll gain a tactical understanding of how to put it into practice.
Ultimately, everything in life comes down to establishing and maintaining meaningful human connections. Therefore, the techniques I’ll be discussing will be just as relevant to growing your startup as they will be to raising your kids or pursuing your lifelong goals.