OOO Marketing

For some years I've been a frontrunner without actually knowing it. This thanks to a pathetic need for play and giving my inner child plenty of room. This revelation of smartness is related to OOO, or if you prefer out of office assistant.

What? It's blatantly obvious, but something you need to think more about. Every time I've written a OOO it's been made with care and love for language, and my asynchronous friends and business partners (increasingly often these coincide). The result is that people actually read the text of the Out of Office Assistant.
Hooray, but what's the point your trying to make you say?
Every contact you have with customers and other relationships is an opportunity to build ties and stronger connections. Stronger ties usually means more business. A consciousness regarding these small texts can help strengthen your brand, and it is also an excellent training opportunity in creative writing skills.

Example: Walking in the mountains of Norway. Enhancing my ability to see larger images. Photos of glorious nature coming soon on Flickr. Curious about the result of the brain training? Available for talks from date X.

Example 2: Gone shopping in London. Economic hard times are not solved by closing the wallet. According to Nielsen, each dollar spent shopping generates 3 for society as a whole. Proposals for shops to visit? Twitter me. Proposals for campaigns to increase the shopping can be discussed from the date X.

That wasn't difficult?

Make your social surroundings a favor, do your OOO's more entertaining. It might even generate business.

PS This sounds as something Seth Godin may have said once, but since I haven't read absolutely all the millions of words he has published I choose to take some responsibility for the idea. Should you find references to this topic on the web you are welcome to link to those with a comment.

The O images are a CC remix of Flickr images made by Leo Reynolds.