Say what you will about former President Bill Clinton, but everyone who has met him swears he has that gift of making the person he’s talking to feel as if no one else exists on the planet. Love him or hate him, he managed to use his charm and stature to rescue two American journalists convicted of illegally entering North Korea. Photos showed Kim Jong beaming as he stood beside his guest.

Allegedly, the trip–described as strictly humanitarian by the White House–had been in the works for weeks. The politically savvy families of American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, had helped set up the meeting, after giving the Korean leader a choice of American dignitaries, including Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore and Bill Richardson.

Why did Kim Jong select Clinton? His stated reason was that Clinton had written a letter upon the death of his father, expressing sympathies. Cynics may question this reasoning and assert that Kim Jong simply sought the best person for propaganda targets but I’ve seen too many situations where letters made the difference to doubt that it had at least some impact.

Almost every elected President, even in the modern age of phones, faxes, texts and emails, has been an inveterate letter writer. Pundits joked that the first President Bush got to the White House one letter at a time. Both he and Barbara Bush had long written letters for every occasion throughout their political rise to the White House.

What kinds of letters did they write? Any excuse would do: thanks for help along the campaign trail, birthday wishes, and congratulations on the birth of a child or a graduation.

Another letter writing machine was the late Tim Russert, the long time host of Meet the Press. When he died, hundreds of stories poured in from friends, acquaintances and work associates about the letter that reached them at just the right time. Tim’s ability to connect with people fueled his personal and professional success.

What letter do you need to write? I know that you have at least one you should be attending to. And I do mean a letter, not an email or text. A real, old fashioned letter. I’ll allow you to type it if your handwriting is as bad as mine but you must mail or hand deliver it. Write letters of gratitude, apology, congratulations, forgiveness, birthday or birth wishes, and I miss you. Any excuse will do. As I wrote in my book, We Need to Talk: Tough Conversations with Your Boss; From Promotions to Resignations Tackle Any Topic with Sensitivity and Smarts, relationships fuel career success like nothing else. One of the best ways to take care of relationships is through a letter writing campaign.

I recently wrote gratitude letters to a client, a former boyfriend and my minister. Blessing always flow back to me from these missives, sometimes from surprising places!

Make it a habit to write at least one letter a day. That’s 365 a year. Become a letter writing machine!

If you did that, Oh the Places You’ll Go! You might even be invited to be a hero like Bill Clinton, dashing off to some other hot spot to rescue damsels in distress. Or not. But I guarantee you that some good will come from your old fashioned letter writing campaign.

As John Naisbitt wrote in Megatrends, the future is both high tech and high touch. We have to make conscious efforts to counter all the technology by making touch efforts every day. I promise you that you’ll become a convert once you see the benefits floating back to you.