Compared with the mass distribution afforded to a Tweet or Facebook post, this little blog is but a quiet backwater. A cul de sac. A place where few venture even by accident and so ideal for a little tete a tete with you, safe in the knowledge that nobody else will read these comments. I hope you are good at keeping secrets.
My job is to market a collection of lovely hotels using every tool at our disposal, both online and offline. Last week we held our annual conference and received wonderful encouragement from our 43 member hoteliers who seemed very interested in the many new digital marketing initiatives we have embarked upon. I confess to feeling quite chuffed by this, and have occasionally allowed myself a moment of hubris when looking over some of our creative work like new designs for the web site or e-flyer. What could be better than reaching hundreds of thousands of individuals at the touch of a button? How impressed they will all be when they see what we've sent them!
Today came stark reality. My colleagues and I had waded through our e-mails as usual and been confronted by loads of beautifully crafted web pages. No comment. Click, click, move on to the next one. Then the post arrived and with it a hand-written card from one of our customers. Everyone stopped to read it. "What a nice man" said one, "Doesn't it make you proud to work here?" said another. Yes, it does. By their very rarity, cards and letters have acquired a new status. By being just a teeny bit more trouble to write and send, they imply to you, the recipient, that you are a very important person indeed.
Just like this blog, they are dedicated to a very select few.