Mind your manners, Miss Twitterer.

Don’t eat with your elbows on the table.

Use your napkin!

What do you say to Mrs. Johnson for the lovely gift, Joey? Joey!

Hey, no cutting in line!

Most kids are beat over the head with reminders about their manners on a daily (sometimes hourly) basis. Yet, with age does not always come courtesy. Case in point, the car that refused to get in the long line waiting to turn right and chose, instead, to scoot up the left side and demand to be let in at the front of the line.

Hey! No cutting in line!

Most business professionals maintain a modicum of manners in their normal business dealings. Receptionists ask you to “hold please” or politely request “may I take a message?” Salespeople know to show up on time for business appointments. Bosses can usually expect employees not to whisper or pass notes in meetings… usually.

Yes, Miss Manners is still a powerful force in the business world except, it seems, in the world of social media. Business professionals who wouldn’t dream of sharing their opinions about Obama, Roe v. Wade or the war in Afghanistan over lunch with a client have no qualms about blogging or Twittering those same opinions to the world. Social Media can be a powerful way to build your business, but not if potential customers are turned off at their first experience with you.

Minding your manners when interacting in the social media world is not much different than in the real world, as Rohit Bhargava points out in his article “10 Ways to Improve Your Social Media Kharma.” Maximizing your social media impact just requires remembering a few things mom taught you.

Always tell the truth.

Make sure to say “thank you.”

Don’t talk behind people’s backs.

And for heaven’s sake, no blogging at the dinner table! Were you raised in a barn?

What’s everyone Twittering about?

Everyone’s abuzz about social networking lately. Last year I got LinkedIn and now my 132 contacts and I are all part of the human daisy chain of “who do you know who knows someone who knows somebody I want to meet?” I figure if I add enough contacts eventually I will indeed find that Kevin Bacon is just six degrees away.

I joined Facebook and last month a friend from elementary school dropped in to chat online. She’s a physicist now. No wonder she always beat me at Parchesi.

Once of my colleagues recommended Jigsaw last week. The service is aptly named. If you can put the pieces together and figure out what they do, you’ve earned the right to be on Jigsaw.

Even the bars are getting into the game. Harry’s Banana Farm in Lake Worth has someone on staff who should be in the copywriting business. Last week their sign read “You Twitter My Space and I’ll Google your Yahoo.”

Signing up for social networking sites is easy enough, but once you’re there, then what? Can social networking really benefit your business?

The answer is yes. To be successful at it, though, you’re going to have to change the way you think.

The best example of a successful marketing effort using social networking came from a colleague in another market. His firm had been hired by a company that was launching a new product. This product was purported to age wine through the use of magnets embedded in a round base surrounding the bottle of wine. Skeptical? So were a lot of potential customers.

My colleague, an avid Twitter user, put a Tweet out to his network talking about the product and questioning whether or not it really worked. Before long, he was receiving lots of Tweets telling him how wonderful the product really was. He rebroadcast the positive responses and news of this new product has now spread far and wide in the Twitter community and beyond. The product is getting huge publicity and it all started with one little Tweet.

That’s just one example of how social networking can be a powerful tool in promoting your business. You just have to figure out how to best use it. Keep trying. Kevin Bacon is closer than you think.