[NTG-context] beginner question re: counters

Hi: I apologize for asking such a basic question. What is the correct way to increment a counter such that each time a macro is used, the counter is augmented by 1. So far, I have \newcount\MyCounter and have tried \advance\MyCounter by1 and a few other things I found online, but whenever I try to increase its value by 1, all references to it's value return 1. Not a particularly useful counter ;-) . Thanks, Matt