A few weeks ago, someone named Diana "friended" me on Facebook. I always give people the benefit of the doubt.

Soon enough, I was inundated by group invites and the like (no more Apps or Zombies or whatever). My patience was wearing thin.

She was interrupting me w/useless crap.

So, I shut her down. I "removed" her as a Facebook Friend. Too much noise. Not enough signal.

I did the same thing on Twitter with some folks I had thought might be interesting.

IMHO, there's a balance on stuff that shows your personality and stuff that adds value to my life (the reason I presumably started to follow you in the first place.) I skew to the 80% "value add" and 20% personal.

But there's also a quantity limit.

A few tweets per day is fine. More than about 5, for me, and well, that's more than I want. It's overload.

So I remove you.

In both cases, you are shut off from me. You don't have my attention and you no longer have my permission. So you can't get your story out.

Now, take that same experience and apply it to your business.

"We'll just call the customer again."

"We've touched them 4 times in this campaign."

I may not be able to "un-follow" or "remove" you....but I may as well have.

It's getting easier and easier to block ALL communications. And I'll tell you what, Diana can ask again to be my "friend," but odds are I'll say "thanks, but no thanks."

My time (and attention) are too valuable. So is yours. thanks for reading.