“Attention” is the new currency. Getting “mindshare” is the next upgrade. This article is about getting attention that will ultimately lead to gaining mindshare. I call this getting attention meaningfully.

It’s no secret that attention is a scarce resource in the lives of many people. In fact, statistics show that the average time a person spends on a Web page is close to seven seconds. If that number is correct, then the fact that you are reading this sentence already proves that you are part of the exception, not the rule.

So what, you ask, does it take to get attention meaningfully?

I asked this exact question to a small sub-set of my network and the resounding answer was to “distinguish yourself.” In other words, you need to stand out from the crowd.

That seems like common sense, but the very next question is: How do we do that?

Here are three specific things to consider:

Stake a claim where it matters

In other words, stand for something that’s meaningful AND something that your audience cares about. For Fedex it was overnight delivery; for Zappos and Nordstrom, it was customer service; for Apple, it was design and simplicity; for Tom’s shoes and Kiva, it was a cause they believed in; for Harley Davidson, it was the community.

Extend the value chain for mutual benefit

A good way to explain this is via a case study of Cardinal Health. Long ago, they sold medical supplies to hospitals. Under pricing pressure from other companies (especially overseas manufacturers that have lower cost base) they reinvented themselves to extend their value chain. In the new model, rather than selling medical supplies, they started offering a service. For example, for a knee operation, they would send all the required materials to the operation theatre 30 minutes before. Also, the supplies would be chosen based on the particular surgeon’s preference, arranged exactly the way the surgeon would have wanted it. The result: there was no need to maintain inventory and the process was less error prone. Overseas manufacturers could never compete with that kind of service. Today, Cardinal Health is a Fortune 17 company with billions of dollars in revenues.

Be attention-worthy

 There is no other simple way of saying this: If you bring something that’s attention-worthy, tactics surrounding that will amplify it. If you don’t have anything that’s attention-worthy, then tactics will probably hurt as people make a mental note that you are out to “trick” them.

Take the story of Peldi Guilizzoni, founder of Balsamiq. Peldi was a Software Engineering Lead at Adobe and discovered the need for an online mockup tool as one of his friends Randah, a product manager, expressed frustration about not having a simple tool to put her vision into a feature spec. In a few months, Peldi built one of the most popular online mockup tools. Balsamiq was not marketed with a big budget, but it was truly attention-worthy. And, it got the deserved attention.

In the end, don’t waste your time trying to get attention. The same time could be used to “create value,” and if “true value” is created, getting meaningful attention is only a matter of time.

As a bonus, here are 25 ways to distinguish yourself.

Image credit: Misty

Rajesh Setty is an entrepreneur, author and speaker based in Silicon Valley. He also creates and sells limited-edition prints at Sparktastic. You can follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/rajsetty.