The interwebs are lousy with political analysis of what’s going to happen tomorrow. Perhaps we all could have saved a lot of time and discussion had we just paid more attention back in April to The Political Astrology Blog.

No, they didn’t replace the content there with material that’s actually funny. C|Net reports.

You don’t want cyberbullying to be protected speech, do you? Of course not. No one does, except the Missouri bullies who claimed Constitutional protection and got the appropriate smackdown. Social Media Today reports.

“A man’s house burns down. The smoking wreckage represents only a ruined home that was dear through years of use and pleasant associations. By and by, as the days and weeks go on, first he misses this, then that, then the other thing. And when he casts about for it he finds that it was in that house. Always it is an essential — there was but one of its kind. It cannot be replaced. It was in that house. It is irrevocably lost. It will be years before the tale of lost essentials is complete, and not till then can he truly know the magnitude of his disaster.”
—Mark Twain

Social Media Explorer explains why.

I probably receive many of the same sorts of pitches that Mark Smiciklas writes about in his post. Here’s the thing, though: Engaging in pure one-one-one outreach is not always cost-effective, even for the most knowledgeable and experienced marketers. On the other hand, engaging in sweeping one-email-size-fits-all outreach to a large mailing list can, as Mark correctly notes, erode business value.

The question is this: How does any given company find a cost-effective happy medium?

I wish I had an easy answer. I do believe that the answer begins, as so many marketing answers do, with “it depends.”

It depends on the nature of the business, the nature of the outreach, the nature of the audience, the nature of the communication goal — in brief, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to avoiding a one-size-fits-all solution when customizing outreach for each of 1,000 (or even 100) recipients is damn near impossible.

Is that time-consuming one-on-one outreach “the only real effective way to nurture relationships that can add business value over time” as Mark writes? Probably. But that won’t stop companies of all sizes from trying to cut corners.

Takeaway for marketers: When you’re cutting those corners, and you will, do so with a scalpel, not a hatchet. That way, you at least have a shot at learning something and minimizing any damage you might inflict.