The advice from visibility experts and content strategists from across the land of LinkedIn is that when it comes to your content, you should simply just ‘Be Memorable‘.

In my own personal and professional view (both as a writer and as a person with a decent working memory), ‘Be Memorable‘ – in the long list of god-awful advice for chasing visibility – is second only to ‘Be Yourself‘.

Both of these content commandments are as lazy as they are trite, and often emanate from the mouths of people who have mastered the memorable purely because they’re as present and persistent as a mad case of genital warts. This kind of mindlessly dispensed advice at least deserves some sort of caveat, I feel.

Warts and all, if you will.

Be memorable… but for something that makes you money, rather than makes you a meme.

Be memorable… but for being a delight, rather than a drain.

Be memorable… but for reasons that make people laugh with you, rather than at you.

Be memorable… but for being a dream to be around, rather than a nightmare people can’t wake up from.

Be memorable… but for inspiring hearts and minds, rather than irritating stomachs and gag reflexes.

I’ve recently joined a networking group in order to represent a charity that I volunteer for. As a result of my participation, I have to get up and do my ’60 seconds’ every week, where I tell the rest of the room who I am, what I do, and who I do it for (or something). Now, I’m a solid communicator (professional writer, former teacher, etc), but this ‘stand-up-and-pitch’ activity still stresses me the hell out, as I pile the pressure on myself to articulate everything to absolute perfection. But whilst I spend a lot of time (as I’m sure we all do in these situations) thinking solely about my own pitch, I am similarly haunted from the years of having listened to other people’s pitches at countless events and meetings, whilst struggling to choke them all down over cold coffee and soggy sausages.

The ones that were so memorable they stayed with me?

The ones that were less ’60 seconds’ and more ‘best part of an hour’.

The ones that made me cringe or feel embarrassed on the speaker’s behalf.

The ones delivered in a tone that suggested even the speaker was bored off his/her/their tits.

The ones that used so much jargon I started to wonder if I was in the wrong room.

The one’s with taglines that were at best missing a trick, and at worst just plain fucking awful. 

(Don’t ever get me started on a missed opportunity to be devastatingly witty with a pun…)

I remember them all because they hurt my brain and stole time away from my life that I will never get back. Did I want to remember them? No. But negativity has a way of digging in deep and sticking around for the long-haul, doesn’t it. I may have remembered the good stuff for a short while, but the brain space weighting is most definitely always in the favour of the fucking dreadful. That’s just life.

But yeah, always be memorable. Because visibility.

I could stop right here and illicit some nods from my readers, I’m sure. But there’s actually another reason I feel that “be memorable” is an empty phrase and wasted focus as part of a visibility strategy.

I’ll illustrate it – as I like to do with most things – via the medium of food…

I went to a quiz night a few weeks ago for the charity I represent (Bolton Destitute Animal Shelter, in case you were wondering). There was much mirth on our team when it was announced that there was to be a Food and Drink round. Fun fact – croissants originated in Vienna, it seems. And apparently every other team in the room other than ours knew that. Paris, you say? What a ludicrous notion…

But I digress.

The question that really got everyone talking during the round, was…

“Which chocolate treat has the slogan… ‘The lighter way to enjoy chocolate’?”

As a lover of words and cocoa-based confectionery in equal measure, I confidently went all-in on “Milky Way!”, before instantly doubting my outburst (despite half the team agreeing with me). One of my other team-mates questioned if the answer might indeed be Aero instead, because of the bubbles. This made total sense, and validated my claim that I wasn’t 100% sure on my first answer. We all agreed in assertion, and wrote down Aero in anticipation of a point.

We were wrong. Our bubble was burst.

Hardly anyone got it right, it seemed – as evidenced by the sheer volume of “Of COURSE!” and “For fuck’s SAKE!” exclamations that echoed around the bar when the real answer was revealed.

Racy wife that I am, I immediately wanted to share this story with my other half when I got home. I posed the question, and in quickly committing to Aero... he quickly got it wrong.

I then posed the question to my neighbour when he dropped off my Hello Fresh box, after it had been incorrectly but predictably delivered to his house instead of ours earlier that day. Bang wrong from him, too. I can’t remember what choc he chose, but it was wrong, nonetheless.

And finally, I put the question to three of my cleverest mates whilst out with them for some lunch later that week. Aero, Milky Way, and Flake all formed their collection of confection-based answers – with almost immediate responses given, to boot.

Aero? Err, no. Even the internet can’t seem to fathom what that treat’s tagline is/ever was…

Milky Way? No way. I want to sing “The red car and blue car had a race” song at you (now THAT’s memorable), but that doesn’t help us on our quest.

Flake? No, for god’s sake. You’re the crumbliest, flakiest kind of wrong on that one.

That massively memorable tagline was, in fact, for…

Maltesers.

Everyone knows Maltesers. Everyone loves Maltesers (you’re wrong if you don’t). Everyone remembers the tagline for Maltesers…

They just attribute it to at least three of its rich chocolatey rivals instead, unfortunately!

There are lots of other examples I could use to prove my point that “memorable” should never be a strategy, thanks to both its unreliability and its need for context. Misquoted lyrics in sing-along-songs, misquoted scenes in epic films, and even misquoted quotes in quotes! No, Abraham Lincoln did not coin ‘Live Laugh Love’, funnily enough. I don’t care how much access he had to driftwood and chalk.

I’ll finish with a (proper) quote about a misquote in an ICONIC film of the 1990s…

And if you’re a fellow fan of the film, you can be the Dionne to my Cher.

It’s just like Hamlet said, ‘To thine own self be true‘.”

“Err, Hamlet didn’t say that.”

“I think that I remember Hamlet accurately.”

“Well, I remember Mel Gibson accurately, and he didn’t say that. That Polonius guy did.”

Be memorable?

You have to do it right, people.

Otherwise…

Whatever.