"He sends his own personal emails!"

[He] sends his own personal emails. He does!

So says Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, confirming that Pope Benedict XVI is technologically savvy. (As seen in Our Sunday Visitor).

Just like the art of letter-writing, people can tell when you are being personal, when you are actually giving your own time and your own words to a response. How many times have you emailed or written a politician, or a famous person, and received either a form-generated response, or something that sounds canned?

Your organization can always benefit from giving personal responses. I write every single response to every single email I receive; for a short time, I had a series of canned copy/paste responses for certain questions, but I gave up on that once I realized that taking an extra five minutes out of every day would help me to be able to connect more personally with those who went out of their way to contact me.

If you are the leader of an organization, or a person held in high regard, you have the power to greatly influence people and help them feel closer to your organization (or Church) through your personal touch. Take the time to write a response—whether that be through email, a hand-written or typed letter, or even through a secretary. People on the other end will tell you took the time for them, and will remember that.