Many people will take the time to set a simple auto-response to go out when someone writes them an e-mail. It’s usually something like “I will be out of the office until Tuesday, 4/14. If necessary, I can be reached at …” Talk about a missed opportunity!

Why not get a little fancy with this message and do a bit of promotion while you’re at it? After all, you have to write something there anyway, how about adapting one of these lines for your next out-of-office reply:

1. I’m out of town and can’t respond to your message until next Tuesday. While you’re waiting for me, check out our blog at http://talance.com/blog
2. I’m not checking e-mail while I’m out of the office until Tuesday, but I’m still Twittering! You can get a daily dose of what I’m doing at http://twitter.com/talance
3. I’m out of the office until Tuesday, but I’ll be celebrating our latest website launch the whole time I’m away. Check out http://massmentors.org and tell me what you think.

The best part? You don’t have to do any extra work to do a little promotion.

How do you reach your constituency when they’re teenagers, don’t use e-mail, aren’t on Facebook and the cost of texting is prohibitively expensive? It’s a good question that came in to me today.

One option is to set up a Twitter account and start promoting it to your audience. This is a service that you can access from your PC and send short messages that your teens can subscribe to. Think mini-blog. Check out this handy list of questions from Twitter’s site.

Otherwise, most cell phone providers give e-mail addresses to their subscribers, with their cell phone number at the beginning and their provider name at the end (something like 1235551212@verizon.com). It’s generally free to receive e-mailed text messages for them and free for you to send them. Ask your teens who they have service with, and this will go a long way to connecting with them.