Could you possibly be a social media douchebag?
Read these 10 signs and see for yourself…

The straw that broke the camel’s back was today, when I received a Twitter DM advertising some sort of Christmas shopping junk. I went to the guy’s profile page to unfollow him, and there, right on his bio, it said “I am a social media marketing expert.” I Tweeted publicly (without including his name): “If you DM spam me, you are NOT a ‘social media marketing expert’. You’re just an asshole.”

That led to the creation of this list…the worst of what I’ve experienced in nearly 3 years of Twitter and Facebook:

The Top 10 Signs You May Be a Social Media Douchebag

10. Every time you sign up for a new “social media” website, you gladly enter in your email username and password so it can send invites out to all your friends.

9. You send out “e-invites” to your “webinars” to all your friends on Facebook. Surely that guy you had a crush on in elementary school will be interested in your “101 Ways to Grow Your Knitting Business” webinar!

8. You subscribe to or buy anything that promises you can “increase your Twitter followers 100x, overnight!” Never mind that most of the people promoting it only have a handful of followers…you’re different!

7. You find this cool program that lets you set up your Twitter to auto-broadcast all of Mashable’s latest articles. Now you can definitely claim the title “social media expert”!

6. You DM all of your Twitter followers regularly about new offers from your clients and from companies that pay you. As a bonus, you sometimes include “Tweet this!” as an indication that your followers should do something nice for you after you’ve spammed them.

5. You let all those “Increase your Twitter followers”  and “OMG I just created a survey!” programs DM your followers for you, and don’t know how to stop them. (Hint: Go to Twitter -> Settings -> Connections and remove them, or change your password.)

4. You write on your friends’ walls and beg them to come join your team in Mafia Wars, help find that poor lost cow in Farmville, or otherwise waste hours of their time helping you in some ridiculous online quest.

3. You broadcast anything on your Twitter stream about how a mom discovered a new way for everyone to have whiter teeth, how you can trade the Forex market for just a small “investment”,  how anyone can “get ripped”, or how Donald Trump wants to help you become a millionaire.

2. You think RTing quotes from people like Zig Ziglar and Tony Robbins makes you look cool. Here’s a hint: If we wanted quotes, we’d go look them up on the Internet, or read those guys’ books and info products (they sure put out enough of them!)

1. You write anything on your public Twitter stream that includes “Help me get to ___ followers!” or “Only __ away from ____ followers!” (Hint: No one cares! We’re people, not “followers.”)

Bonus: You respond to this list by saying, “Hey, if they don’t like it, they can delete it!”

Erica’s Note: How I Got 20,000 Followers on Twitter…For Real

I now have over 20,000 followers on Twitter. I suppose I could “sell my secrets”, but how about I give them to you, right now, for free?

I went out and followed thousands of people who shared interests with me. (I even wrote a blog post on one technique I used.) Many of them followed me back. Six months of doing that and I had gone from 4,000 followers to 20,000 followers. I’ve also met a ton of new friends.

I don’t follow people so they will follow me back. That wastes everyone’s time. I follow people who share interests with me. Unfortunately, even real people sometimes get roped in by scams or turn their Twitter stream into a crap-filled chorus of poorly-thought out promotions. I keep it simple: if you’re not communicating with your audience–if you’re a one-way, broadcasting billboard–I unfollow you.

Want 20,000 real, human followers on Twitter? There ain’t no free lunch. Go work for it.

Recommended Reading:

• How to Find People on Twitter. My definitive video guide to finding, and following, real people on Twitter.
• Why Entrepreneurs Fail–Will You Avoid These Three Traps? Similar to what the social media douchebags do…many entrepreneurs fall into traps as well. I detail three of these traps and how to avoid them.
• How To Choose A Business. Want to start a business, but have too many ideas? Here’s how to narrow them down.
• Follow me on Twitter, or become a fan of erica.biz on Facebook.

How to find people on Twitter.

This video is about using Twellow, the “Twitter yellow pages”, to find people who share your interests on Twitter. I use Twellow to find the thought leaders in a niche. You can drill down very specifically; for instance, finding only personal finance bloggers.

If you have a specific target market, Twellow is incredibly useful for finding people in that niche, as well.

I had never heard of Twellow, despite being on Twitter for nearly three years, and that’s why I decided to shoot this video. I have no personal relationship with Twellow.

How to Find People on Twitter (7 minutes)

Highlights:

[2:20] Using Twellow’s primary categories. There are over 47,000 people listed under “Blogging” — wow!
[2:30] Search results are ranked in order of the number of followers a person has. Pete Cashmore of Mashable takes top honors in the “Blogging” category, with over 1.1 million followers.
[4:00] This is where the power of Twellow shines — the ability to search within a category. A search for “personal finance” within the Blogging category finds just 84 people.
[4:30] Once you drill down and find people with fewer followers, it’s more likely you will be able to personally interact with those people.
[4:40] If you do a search that only returns a few people, click on all of their profiles on Twitter and follow most of them.
[5:20] Why you should follow bloggers in your industry even if you’re not a blogger yourself.
[6:05] Twellow shows matching category listings when you search for a specific term, as well. This is the most valuable part of Twellow if you are running a business — you can connect with everyone in your demographic as well as everyone in a target market for your business. Example: CFOs.
[6:55] I currently have over 13,000 followers on Twitter. How did I get so many followers? I give a quick tip.

Requesting Your Feedback!

I’m looking for feedback on this type of blog post. Would you like to see more videos from me? Is there a question you would like me to answer? Would you like to see more videos on how to use Twitter and social media, or videos on other topics?

My plan is to post these videos as blog posts in addition to my regular weekly posts. I thought posting them on Saturdays might be a good way to start. I’m also open to feedback on that.

Please leave a comment with what you thought of this video, as well as what you’d like to see from me in the future regarding video blog posts!

Recommended Reading:

• Twellow. The site referenced in the video.
• Twitter’s “Find People” page. Use this if you are looking to find people you already know by name or email address.