There’s a line between repeating a message to get through noise vs. spamming.

Marketers must master that distinction, I think.

Issue 2 of Thought Radiation, a companion publication of Broadcasting Brain that’s only available by E-Mail, is ready to go.  As before, it’s a very simple format, no graphics, etc. newsletter talking about past, present and future of my content creation work.  And other interesting stuff.

If you had already signed up for my mailing list, then don’t worry, a copy of the newsletter is on the way.

If you’d like to be included on the mailing list, just drop me a line at contact@broadcasting-brain.com and I’ll gladly include you on this list so you can receive the first two issues plus all upcoming newsletters and stuff.

Cheers!

I don’t normally dig into the tech mainstream in this blog, but Mike Arrington’s Techcrunch article on his woes with Apple devices and services does catch my attention for the following reasons:

1. It’s a pretty high profile complaint about Apple.

2. I am quite surprised about the number of failures that he lists in his blog post.

I have very little experience with Apple’s products, although I know a number of people who absolutely love them.

For my part, I’ve never found a compelling reason to switch from the Microsoft world to Apple, mainly because my work environment is 100% Microsoft and I’m very comfortable with that.

It does concern me that Mike is using his personal experience as the yardstick to base a significant part of his opinion. However, he isn’t alone in expressing these opinions.

For my part, I’ll be curious to see if Apple reacts publicly to Mike’s article. My gut says no, but we’ll see.

Following up on my recent confession of being a Google Reader junkie, I’ve discovered that a blog has risen near to the top of my Google Reader Shared Items trends. I’ve circled the curious item in the image above.

How did it slip in there like that without my noticing? Perhaps it has some kind of stealthy properties.

It seems sneaky, better watch that one, folks.

Blog posts from Aaron Brazell (Technosailor) and Scott Rosenberg’s Wordyard on the topics both touched upon the dilemma of finding an audience for your work and making your work easy to be found.

A lot of social media writing focuses on tools and techniques to accomplish the related tasks of audience building and marketing your work.

In keeping with the theme of efficiency and effectiveness from my last post, I have some comparisons of different methods to promote your work, as seen through lenses of efficiency and effectiveness, for you to consider:

Efficiency is blasting off 10,000 E-Mails to 10,000 strangers with a single keystroke.
Effectiveness is getting the right E-Mail to the right person who will appreciate and celebrate your work.

Efficiency is using Ping.fm, Twhirl, or some other tool to send quick updates and links to multiple Web 2.0 services at once.
Effectiveness is crafting the specific message for the right audience using the right medium.

Efficiency is using a bookmarking tool like Bookmarking Demon to create a horde of links back to your blog in order to boost your blog’s performance with search engines.
Effectiveness is building relationships with other bloggers and social media users in order to obtain genuine respect and admiration based on value, trust, and goodwill.

Efficiency is using a bulk article writing/mass submission tool to send your work out to multiple locations at once.
Effectiveness is writing the right article at the right time and getting it in front of the right eyeballs.

Efficiency involves using these tools plus a bunch of different advertising methods to drive income via CPM and CPC pay models.
Effectiveness… well, that’s a question that we’d all like to answer, especially the vast majority of us who’d like to be rich or at least financially independent. However, I think an important part of effectively reaching your content creation goals must focus on delivering and receiving lots of value.

I tend to think more in terms of being effective instead of being efficient. That’s one reason I tend not to fret about optimizing the use of every single second of time during my day. The down side to not optimizing is wasted time and potential. On the other hand, efficiency can be wasted without proper direction.

Efficiency does have its merits. Sometimes the shotgun approach to audience building and promotion can yield results when you can’t accurately target the people who are part of your target audience. Plus, of course, there’s always the X factor: you can’t always predict the results of every action because we have limited knowledge of the world and the people in it. Thus, maximum penetration with minimal effort can sometimes lead to good results.

On the other hand, high bounce rates from social news and social bookmarking do make you wonder about the wisdom of using a shotgun.

My gut tells me that effectiveness is the proper mindset for the twin goals of audience building and “findability” (as Aaron Brazell mentions) but efficiency has its place and shouldn’t be discounted either. Effectiveness, at its heart, includes creating valuable content. That’s what I strive to do. However, given the power of search engines, I’m starting to believe that ignoring the power of SEO (search engine optimization) isn’t the best idea either.

Is it better to maximize every single second of your life, filling it with activity, or is it better to occasionally to do things in a less structured manner where you achieve big things? And does today’s technology, which brings more efficiency tools than we can possibly conceive, really lead us to achieve great things?

Two key terms that I learned while studying for my business degree were efficiency and effectiveness.

Efficiency is a measurement of your results in relation to the work and materials your use to get your results.

Getting the same results with less work and materials normally equates to an increase in efficiency. There’s a heck of a lot of interest out there in efficiency.

Image by sara.atkins

Effectiveness is a measurement of how successful you are in achieving your goals: did your hard work lead to the desired result.

Does your work, your use of time, and use of materials lead you to accomplish your goal? If so, then you are effective in accomplishing that goal.

There are plenty of rewards for being effective.

Image by jonrawlinson

Which is better – efficiency or effectiveness?

I’d far rather be effective than efficient. I’d rather know that my efforts, however imbalanced, were accomplishing what needed to be accomplished, rather than maximizing the output of every single activity.

A lot of software/Web applications seem to be focusing on efficiency: doing more with less.

But are they making us more effective? Can they?

What do you think?

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