Seth had an intresting post about brainless PR folks trying to get his attention by sending him irrelevant press releases. That brings me to the next post in the “Distinguish yourself” series.

A few months ago, I received an unsolicited email from (now) my good friend Bob Thomas. It was an announcement about a brand new magazine called Enterprise Open Source Journal, the first ever magazine dealing with open source in the enterprise. Being in the open source business for the last four years, I did not consider this spam and in fact, I thanked Bob for sending this over to me, albeit unsolicited. Why? One key reason was that this information was very relevant for me and my business.

Relevancy is key to move ahead. If you remember some of your interactions where you “tuned out”, one of the reasons may have been that the other person continued to say things that were not “relevant” to you. Now the key question: How many times did you continue talk with someone about something that was not relevant to them?

If we are not relevant, people will tune out and our messages won’t get through. Relevancy is a key factor to increase your likeability says my friend Tim Sanders in his new book The Likeability Factor.

Striving for relevance in every key interaction (with your clients, co-workers, family members etc.) can make a big difference in your life and in the lives of people around you. This may sound obvious but let me say it anyway – if you want to increase relevance, start truly caring for people who you interact with. Once you care, you will start taking notice of what is relevant to them rather than focusing on what is relevant to you.