It occurred to me as I was sketching out this series that a few of you might actually want to know how to disengage from people, or how to engage under less pleasant circumstances than what I generally will be talking about for the next couple of months. Since I’m a giver, I wanted to make sure you would feel the love, so this post is dedicated especially to you! For those of you who still want to learn more about how to engage successfully on Social Media sites, just take the opposite of a lot of these concepts and roll with them. It should still work just fine for you.
Without further delay, then, here are 7 great ways to drive people nuts.
1. Send as many Auto DMs as possible: As my friend Gloria (@GrandmaOnDeck) noted in the comments on my last post, Auto DMs, or direct messages, can seem like a great idea when you first start out on Twitter. After all, what could be better than sending a thank you note to everyone who follows you?
Well, once you’ve been in the Twitter world for a little while, you come to understand that receiving an Auto DM is kind of like a really nice way of saying, “I almost want to engage with you, but not quite.”
If you want to drive people nuts, sending Auto DMs is a fantastic way to go. It saves time and will probably result in you having to engage with fewer people.
2. Promote yourself, your company, and your products/services once every 5-10 minutes: Even the most self-promotional people can get tired of tweeting out the same “click this link” kind of tweet, but there are lots of ways to mix it up. For example:
- Retweet every retweet you get
- Retweet every Follow Friday mention you get (if you really want to rub salt in the wounds, don’t add anything to your retweet, like “thanks.” Just hit the retweet button)
- Thank 20 people at a time for retweets so that you can show everyone, in addition to your retweets of your retweets, how often you get retweeted
3. Send links to questionable sites or content: A great way to make people want to throw pillows at you is to post a link to a site that is in poor taste, that has a lot of pop-up windows, or even better, a spam site. People will forever remember you as the person who sent them to a questionable site. Again, to drive people cashews instead of just regular nuts, make sure that your tweet in no way previews the nature of the content you’re asking them to visit. In fact, make it sound really interesting!
4. Engage in bad manners as often as possible: It sometimes is hard to discern what bad manners look like in Social Media. Here are some ideas to help you out.
- Jump into a chat and do nothing but promote yourself
- Ask people to help you out without ever returning the favor
- Saying mean stuff about people (well, that one kind of holds true in real life, too)
- Reveal secrets that have been told to you in the wide open Social Media ether
I’m sure you can get creative from that point onward.
5. Be a drama queen (or king): Oh, the drama. There are so many different ways to be overly dramatic on Social Media sites. You can be offensive when commenting on someone’s blog post. You can insist on Twitter that someone wronged you. My personal favorite is when everyone is ready to drop an issue, even admit that you are right, and yet you still keep the flames stoked. Red hot fiery drama goes so well with driving people nuts. It’s truly a match made in heaven.
6. Do not give credit where credit is due: Again, the options here are dizzying, so I’m just going to line item some ideas for you.
- Literally copy someone’s blog post and do not credit them
- Take credit for an idea that was not yours
- If you’re feeling creative, you can also turn this around a bit and credit someone with a bad idea or a misstep when it was not them (maybe it was even you!)
7. Avoid responding to people at all costs: Obviously, if you want to drive people nuts and avoid engaging with others, the simplest methodology is to just not respond. Do not answer comments on your blog posts. That’s an easy one. And on Twitter, hey, all you have to do is never visit your replies page. See no replies, respond to no replies.
Bonus information -> Number 7 can be super sweet if you add it to any of the previous steps. It’s like adding wasabi to sushi. It’s just that little extra kick that is sure to drive people bonkers.
Those are my ideas. What are your best recommendations for driving people nuts? Let’s share.
This is post number 4 in The Engagement Series. Thanks for reading!
Image by guillermo ossa. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/memoossa