Obviously, there are exceptions (sometimes glaring), but in general, social proof provides shortcuts that are helpful for people most of the time.

If you went to Harvard, the thinking goes, you must be intelligent if your book was a New York Times bestseller, it must be good.

Social proof is a heuristic that allows people to judge something - in this case, you - based on your affiliations with brands they already trust. It’s cognitively taxing for them to independently evaluate every person they come into contact with to determine, “Is this person credible?” Indeed, performing that calculation is almost impossible if the person is outside their field of expertise, because they simply may not have enough information to know. Humans, especially busy ones, have a bias toward conserving mental energy. Understanding that dynamic can help talented professionals, who may be prone to focusing their energy on the techniques that come most easily to them, know where to apply their efforts in order to ensure their true value is recognized. Without at least two of these, though ideally you have all three, it’s structurally almost impossible for your message to break through. These are social proof, which gives people a reason to listen to you content creation, which allows them to evaluate the quality of your ideas and your network, which allows your ideas to spread. I found plenty of useful techniques, from cultivating a trusted wingman to help promote you to others, to identifying commonalities with the people you’re seeking to influence so they’ll be more receptive to your message.Īs I came to realize, though, there are three foundational elements to getting your ideas understood and appreciated, elements that underlie everything else. In the course of researching my book Stand Out, I interviewed more than 50 top thought leaders across a variety of different fields to elicit best practices and commonalities. For years, I’ve been grappling with the question of how professionals in an increasingly noisy and frenetic world can ensure their expertise is recognized.

Stand out by dorie clark