How To Be A Social Media Douche Bag

• Sign up for every single social networking site ever. Start with the usual MySpace and Facebook and just branch out from there. Twitter and Plurk. Brightkite and Orkut. The more rare they are the better, cause you're the social-media expert, remember, so you have to be the all over the place.
• Don't forget to add thousands of friends on all these sites. FORCE PEOPLE TO KNOW YOU.
  
• Tell everyone you're an expert and create blog posts about all the great ideas that you came up with and how people look up to you. Remember, you're marketing yourself here.
• Tell everyone how much money you make. But you really don't make a lot of money so make up facts and figures.
• Make sure everyone knows you use TweetDeck.
  
• Crossposting. Make sure your blog forwards to your Twitter and you have your Twitter updates on your blog, and your Facebook shows all your Twitter updates and your Brightkite forwards to your identi.ca and your MySpace bullitens forward to your Orkut page.
• Find other douche bags to promote you. Even if they're not big names like Kawasaki and Scoble it's ok. The point is that you're the little guy that's doing big things.
• Pretend that you know all the big players. Talk to them, comment on their blogs. Don't forget to share links, retweet, crosspost, reblog, rereblog, rewrite, converse, share, create, collaborate, etc, etc, etc.
• Make some podcasts. Speak in abstract a lot.
• Write things about SEO even if you don't know what you're talking about. Quote Matt Cutts and pretend you hang out with him.
  
• Plan stupid meetups where you discuss the same stuff you talked about online 30 minutes before you met. Public coffee shops are the best because you can be seen being important and smart. Don't forget to bring your MacBook Pro, because all experts use Apple products.
• Hire someone to build a website. Make it all flashy and stuff. You can't be bothered learning how to make websites, you're the social media expert, not some shmuck that does coding all day and night.
• Get some fancy business cards with a fancy logo that makes it look like a big corporation hired you to do PR and SEO work. In fact, use lots of acronyms to confuse people to what you actually do.
• Try to be exactly like Wayne Sutton. Actually, you'll have to make friends with him. See, he's black and you don't want to look like a racist. You are the enlightened expert.
• Post videos to YouTube of you typing really fast or ranting on how some startup is going to fail or Scoble isn't doing it right even though you love him.
  
• Don't ever talk about what you actually think. Speak in abstracts and made up technical terms.
• Don't ever talk about what you actually do. Tell people about big conferences, but don't actually let them find out you were never there.
• Read TechCrunch like everyday. Leave comments about how all those startups will never succeed without your help.
• And most important of all, don't let anyone tell you that you don't know what you're doing. There's lots of old media and haters out there that just want to see you fail. But the proof is in the AdSense earnings. Make sure you read lots of e-books and get all the latest tools to maximize your earnings. Even you can market to marketers, you're the social media expert.

Learn more by following me on Twitter: @benmarvin