com·mu·ni·cate
1. Share or exchange information, news, or ideas.
2. Impart of pass on (information, news, ideas):  “he communicated his findings to the inspector.”

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A while back I wrote a blog post on How to Market Yourself.  It included these thoughts:

It almost doesn’t matter.  Seriously – it almost doesn’t matter.  Market yourself any way you want to.  Use social media, use the D-R-I-P method.  Use the farming approach of a good real estate agent.  Refine your elevator speech.  Get serious about using Constant Contact.
Just market!
If you don’t market yourself, who will?

Well, it’s time for version two of this message.  This time, on the “how to communicate” issue.

It doesn’t matter.  Seriously, it doesn’t matter.  You can go with one-on-one, face-to-face communication.  You can use the phone.  Or e-mail.  Or Twitter.  Or Facebook.  Or LinkedIn.  Or a Town Crier.  Or a blimp, dropping leaflets.  It really doesn’t matter.

What matters is that you communicate.

And, that you communicate repeatedly.  Say your message, repeat your message, until (and this is the only test of good communication!) your audience lets you know, “Yes, I got your message.  Thanks for letting me know.”

Now, here is a critical mistake.  Say that you prefer e-mail only.  You will make a real mistake if you think that your audience/listener/reader also prefers e-mail.  He or she may get too many e-mails.  They may not get to their e-mails very often.  Or, they may simply be lazy, inattentive e-mail readers.

But, you say, “I sent my message.  It is their job to read, to pay attention to the message I sent.”  Now, I say this with all due respect…  But, are you an idiot?  It doesn’t matter whose “job” it is to pay attention.  The only thing that matters is that the “Yes, I got your message — thanks for sending it” stage is attained.

So, if you have something important to say, say it “redundantly.”  In multiple ways.  E-mail, Twitter, phone, Town Crier…  Assume that they will get distracted.  Assume that they will not pay close attention the first time you say it/send it.   You have to repeat it until they get it.  Because, as all the old (and new) speech textbooks told you back in your college days, until the “receiver” receives the message that the “sender” sends, there has been no communication.

So, most of all, just communicate.

Over and over and over again…

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(Here’s a little extra on this) — A while back, I wrote this blog post:  “The Rule of Seventeen” – If you Want to Get Your Message Across & Accepted, Repeat, and Repeat and…..  It was prompted by the simple, brilliant “finding” that it takes 17 times of stating a message for it to “sink in” fully.  From my blog post:

One must repeat a message 17 times to get it through, fully accepted, and then acted upon by a listener.

I got this from Ed Savage, a regular at our First Friday Book Synopsis, who first heard this from Naomi Sullivan of St Anthony’s, and then he refined it a bit.  Here is the attachment he sent along:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Yes, of course, there are smarter ways to communicate.  Read Made to Stick and Words that Work. Follow the good advice in these, and other good books.  (You can purchase my synopses of these books, with comprehensive handouts, plus the audio of my verbal presentations at our companion web site, 15minutebusinessbooks.com).   But, make no mistake.  If you are “smarter” with “what you communicate,” but you don’t actually communicate, it will not quite work, will it?