Diffused Influence

I am both a writer and a public speaker. As such I have learned that speaking can be a lot more satisfying than writing ... even if one's writing is reaching a lot more people.

The reason is something I call diffused influence.

I have spoken to groups as large as several thousand and as small as a handful. What all public speaking events have in common is the ability to get immediate feedback. If you speak well, you will surely get a significant amount of positive feedback, mostly after your message but sometimes also during it in the form of spontaneous audience reaction.

I almost always feel more fulfilled after a good public message than after a good article is published.

That's because of diffused influence. Your readers are not all together reading your article at the same time and reporting their feelings back to you almost immediately. They are in different places, reading at different times. But if you have done well, your writing will hit more people and stay around longer than your messages, even if they are recorded.

There is a certain elation to being published. There is an even greater elation to being noticed.

Don't be discouraged because your feedback isn't as strong or immediate as you would prefer. Diffused influence, in most cases, means you're having a greater influence than a public speaker... if you are doing it well and have significant distribution.

Titles: Keep them positive.

Maybe you have come up with an incredibly clever, negative title. Lose it anyway. It has been overwhelmingly proven that positive titles sell more books than negative ones ... and positive article titles induce more people to read on than negative ones.

A couple of years ago, Dr. Elmer Towns, who has had many best-selling books, was in our offices and I asked him to sign a book of his that I had gotten when I took a doctoral seminar from him many years ago. He looked at the book and said, "That book never did sell very well. Negative title doesn't work." The book was Is the Day of the Denomination Dead?

When it comes to titles, your best bet is to keep them positive.