Remember the things we used to hear from our parents when we were kids, “Say please. Say thank you. If you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say anything at all.  If you keep making that face it’ll get stuck like that.”  Well. maybe you didn’t hear that last one in your house. Our folks were right.  Common courtesy ain’t so common any more.  Matter of fact, it’s often as rare as a Kardashian sister using her library card.  Common courtesy makes human interaction go so much more smoothly.  It’s amazing to see what happens in conversations when we actually say please, thank you and apologize when we need to. I bring this up because on Social Media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter it’s very common to see people telling you that you should “Like” their Fan Page, or retweet their tweets on Twitter.  Maybe it’s just me, …

When you’re new to learning about Social Media, the tendency is to focus on huge numbers of Connections, Friends and Followers.  This is normal.  We all like things that look impressive and big numbers look impressive.  Prior to Facebook, where else could you have thousands of “friends”?  It feeds our ego. Once the new car smell of Social Media wears off, we realize that building relationships is far more powerful than just adding more connections.  Yes, adding connections is important.  But you already have a phone book with tens of thousands of connections.  If it was just about connections, you already have more than enough in your Yellow and White Pages. Are you “connecting” with your Social Media connections?  Really connecting?  For one week, schedule 20 minutes into your day to pick up the phone and call two of your new connections per day.  If their phone number isn’t on …