Humans are inherently social creatures. Socialization and connection with a learning community is a central aspect of learning. Although cultivating social presence and connectivity may seem like an afterthought compared to other aspects of course design, the truth is that social connection with other learners can be a key factor in a student's engagement and motivation for a course (Whiteside, 2015). Largely defined as the ability of learners to project themselves socially and affectively into a community of inquiry, social presence is one piece of the community of inquiry model, along with teaching presence and cognitive presence (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2001). With increased social presence, students are more likely to engage in higher order thinking (Garrison et al., 2001), more likely to actively participate in online discussions (Cui, Lockee, & Meng, 2013), less likely to drop out of their classes (Bowers & Kumar, 2015), and overall more satisfied with their learning experience (Moallem, 2015). The purpose of this article is to provide easy-to-implement ideas for the online educator wanting to increase social presence, along with research-based reasoning for employing each strategy. [This is a reprint of an article originally published in "Distance Learning" v15 n2 p47-50 2018.]