How Can You Make Yourself Memorable?

Well, you could do it by dressing up like the fellow above.

But I wouldn’t advise it.

So, how can you make sure that you are memorable at say, a networking event?

You might do it by:

• Being an obvious master of your craft
• Impressing people with your knowledge
• Wearing something consistently so that people identify it with you over time (think Steve Jobs and his turtlenecks)
• Having a great answer prepared when people ask you what you do
• Find ways to get into interesting conversations with people- tip: people generally like it if they have the chance to talk about things they are passionate about so try to learn what that is and turn the conversation that way

One of the difficulties is that, even if you are great at introducing yourself to people and provide sparkling conversation, at any event you won’t have the chance to get around everyone. So for example there might be a person present who would be hugely interested to meet you and is a potential customer for your business, but they talk to other people all night and you never learn of their existence.

There are four main ways that you can make sure that you are noticed at an event, by a lot of people.

1- Host the event- If you are the person hosting the event you obviously have lots of opportunities to engage people before, during and after the event.

2- Speak at the event- If you are a speaker at an event you instantly make it more likely that the ‘right’ people will be able to find you. You will find that after speaking there is a queue of people who want to speak to you- or at the very least people will know who you are without introduction if there is networking afterwards.

3- Sponsor the event- A slightly watered down opportunity from hosting the event to get your message out there. Obviously this option might cost a lot of money.

4- Ask a question at the event- This is an option I use a lot. As long as I a) have a genuine question to ask and b) think that other people beside myself would be interested in the answer to that question, I often ask something at events I attend. Over time, asking questions has helped me in a great many ways. First, it has helped satisfy my curiosity and I have managed to learn more. Second, it has been good training, in addition to the speeches I make myself, in speaking in front of an audience (and using a microphone). Third, it has helped make sure that the speakers/host notice me. Fourth, it has given me the opportunity to get my name and the name of the organisation I am representing at the event into the minds of everyone present- meaning that people are more likely to speak to me in the networking part of the evening, to look up my work when they leave the event and to generally have better awareness of my brand. Fifth, sometimes at a big event, people who I already know (and who I would like to reconnect with), only notice that I am present when I ask a question. Doing so means that they are more likely to come and talk to me in the networking session too.

Of course you may be able to think of other ways to be memorable. Just make sure that you are memorable in a good way…