New Media, Old Jackass

There's a lot of guides and articles available on using social networking and new media for self promotion.  There however, aren't a lot of available information on how to not make yourself look like a complete toolbox while doing it.  Mostly our of personal frustration, here's a quick guideline for effectively utilizing Ye Olde Worlde Wide Web for personal gain.

You are a making a complete ass out of yourself if:

Facebook

-you maintain presence on Facebook solely to promote your blog/web service/loan company.  Online social sites work just like regular social sites.  So having membership in a social site is like going to a bar exclusively to sell home owner's insurance.  Don't be that guy.

-you ask why you were removed from some one's friend list.  There are only two real answers to this one:  either you're boring or you're a dick.  If you're not sure which one, you're probably boring.  

Blog comments

-you can't spell.  Look, I'm not trying to be a jerk here; we all make mistakes.  But if you have a two sentence comment, sans capitalization or punctuation, containing 3 or more spelling and grammatical errors, a lot of people will think that you're 9 years old/ mentally challenged/Sarah Lacy. They just aren't going to take you seriously.  You don't even have to know how to spell-- just push the damned spellcheck button.  Please.

-Your post simply points people to your site.  I'm not talking about people who link to relevant discussions on their own sites, or people who use their site name as user name, I'm talking about stuff like this I just saw on TechCrunch:

Repeat this 40 or 50 times, and you're sure to piss everyone off and make sure they never visit your site.  Ever.  

Twitter

-you give your user name and password to someone else so they can send me twitter profiteering book advertisements under your name.  Congratulations; you're now a  Twitter whore; a prostitwit, if you will.

-you are a celebrity and it's very obvious you aren't managing your own posts.  Way to convey synthetic emotions to your fans.

-you are a celebrity who refers to a commercial product way to much.  Yeah, it's totally awesome how cool iTunes is.  How much are you raking in for that?

-you follow someone you haven't met on Twitter and then ask why they're not following you.  Maybe it's because you're an asshole.

Ahh... I feel better.