Saying thanks is so simple. Why doesn’t it happen more often? Are brands and people too busy? Or, do they just plain old forget they asked for something?
As a public relations practitioner with a media relations core, my job was pitching media every day for eight hours straight in Chicago’s agencies. I don’t recall if I thanked the reporters for running my story back in the day; but I sure as heck do it now.
When someone works in earnest to reach a reporter and speak upwards of 3-4 times to get a story to run, there’s a bit of professional ‘raderie going on. A relationship gets launched, and someone is asking the other for a major consideration.
If that work is rewarded, it would seem obvious a “thank you” is in order. A simple email would suffice, right?
Last fall a very personable PR woman connected with me about her client’s book. She pitched me the story, sent me a book, and I delayed writing a post on it. With little time to read much around the holidays, I forced myself to dive in gladly as the book was worth the read.
A blog post ensued and another reference followed with tweets and likes, and posts throughout the interwebz. What was the result? The author said, “You’re too kind” on a Google+ post and the PR person is nowhere to be found; no acknowledgment.
I’m not a reporter; I’m a professional blogger with a large community. As a result of that blog post, I helped push sales of that book; probably 10 I can tap from my community alone. In this day of oodles of books and budding authors, I’d say 10 is decent.
I wrote awhile ago about thanking Twitter followers for RTs, something I did up until I joined 25 tribes on Triberr. I couldn’t take the hour a day it would take to thank folks, and that always makes me cringe. When you’re trying to build community, it’s so helpful to acknowledge those who give.
This isn’t a whine or rant.
This is a reminder to everyone in business that the words “thank you” are not overdone, unexpected or unwanted.
Please say thank you in business. It’s more than just common courtesy; it’s the stuff relationships are made of.
My Sincere Thanks
And, with that said, I owe deep gratitude to several business partners who assisted and continue to assist on my nightmare tech journeys:
- Heather Solos, community manager with Feedblitz, has been a savior helping me rectify Feedblitz issues with my site. Did I bring those issues onto myself? Yep, most likely; that didn’t stop her from sorting through my issues and getting me up and running. Thank you, Heather.
- Ginny Soskey, is a doll (she looks like one, too), with Shareaholic. I’m using Shareaholic sharing toolbar on this blog and site. I’ve tried many, and each has issues. I’m in love with this tool for bloggers, and the options and variety of sharing features is amazing. They’re getting bigger by the day, but that didn’t stop Ginny from helping me immediately when my share bar went awry. She was on it, learning how to troubleshoot while sending me screen shares and tips on what to fix over here. (Turns out it was Chrome cache; a problem as I had no idea we need to clean our cache on a consistent basis otherwise funky things happen.)
- Adrianne Mayshar of HubSpot is a gem. She’s been riding herd as lead cowboy (isn’t that word like actor…you don’t need to say cowgirl?) through a serious set of integration issues I’m having and continue to have. I appreciate her customer service and that of senior support tech Victoria.
- Scott Quillin, of New England Multimedia, has given undying and relentless support and encouragement as well as ears, eyes and dedication to my tech needs. Not only has he designed this site for me, he has become my IT liaison to help free me from the confines of tech nasty. I cannot say enough good about this man and his client service; astonishing.
I thank them; I thank my readers and this community. I thank you. I appreciate deeply.
