Are you remarkable?

Seth Godin, a leading author on marketing, writes in the Guardian (UK) newspaper: How to be remarkable. I think it’s something college media advisers and student journalists need to consider, especially as they chase online readers. Shoveling out a printed newspaper or a pat format TV newscast isn’t going to cut it forever. You need to be remarkable.

Here’s Godin’s list. He’s got explanatory comments under each one. Go RTWT.

1. Understand the urgency of the situation.
2. Remarkable doesn’t mean remarkable to you. It means remarkable to me.
3. Being noticed is not the same as being remarkable.
4. Extremism in the pursuit of remarkability is no sin.
5. Remarkability lies in the edges.
6. Not everyone appreciates your efforts to be remarkable. In fact, most people don’t.
7. If it’s in a manual, if it’s the accepted wisdom, if you can find it in a Dummies book, then guess what? It’s boring, not remarkable.
8. It’s not really as frightening as it seems.
9. If you put it on a T-shirt, would people wear it?
10. What’s fashionable soon becomes unfashionable.

Godin concludes by echoing something we’ve been pushing here at ICM for some time: the One Thing. If you can only do one new thing with your online news site, do it and do it well.

The alternative is to just be remarkable. Go all the way to the edge. Not in a big thing, perhaps, but in a little one. Find some area where you have a tiny bit of authority and run with it. After you succeed, you’ll discover you’ve got more leeway for next time. And if you fail? Don’t worry. Your organisation secretly wants employees willing to push hard even if it means failing every so often.

And when? When should you start being remarkable? How’s this: if you don’t start tomorrow, you’re not really serious. Tomorrow night by midnight or don’t bother. You’re too talented to sit around waiting for the perfect moment. Go start.

Hey, what do you know, school starts all over the country in the next few days. Now’s the perfect time for us to get started being remarkable.

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