Attention isn’t the same as friendship (or engagement, or popularity).
There’s lots of ways out there to get attention. You can cry and and whine. You can scream to get people to look at you. You can run some pretty clever gimmicks. They will all get people to look at you, but people will get tired of whining, and probably not care an awful lot about what you have to say. You can scream, but people will probably turn their head, and then look back to what they were doing. You can run a gimmick, but when the gimmicks stop coming, so will the people (remember “ReTweet to win a free ipad!”).
That changes though, if you give people something worth talking about. If you give someone something that they want or need, it changes. It may be friendship, it may be business interaction. A gimmick is okay, if it leads to engagement. Without something remarkable behind it, it’s fairly worthless. The first step is fine, the second is much more important.
- Whining’s never really helpful though.
- Be a friend
- Show you care
- Provide a service
- Go the extra mile
- Do something totally selfless
- Help someone
- Provide value
Attention is a fine first step. Don’t let it end there.
