How To Suck At Facebook: A Beginner’s Guide

The success of last week’s How To Build A Crappy Twitter Profile post made me realized something: there are a wonderful plethora of people out there who truly desire to suck at social media.

Well you’re in luck! I’ve decided to expand the helpful Twitter post into a series, teaching YOU how to suck in the most common social networks.

You’re welcome.

So, You Want To Suck At Facebook?

Since Twitter has been taken care of it’s only natural that we turn our attention to Facebook. At this point in time Facebook has over 400 million active users worldwide and at least 50% of those users log into the site at least once a day. More than 20 million people become fans of Facebook pages each day and users share over 5 billion pieces on content each week. Also, in the past year, Facebook overtook Google as the most visited website worldwide.

You wanna suck on a grand scale in front of pretty much the whole world? Well, here’s your chance.

Step 1 – Choosing The Right Profile Picture

Just like with your Twitter profile, you want to start out on Facebook with a truly embarrassing or simply awful picture. When you’re deciding on the photo that will represent you to a good chuck of the world’s population and your potential employers, ask this question:

“Would this picture cause me great personal, mental and professional ridicule and judgement?” or “If I saw this picture, would I immediately hate this person and think less of them?”

If the answer to either of those questions is “yes” then you’ve found your Facebook photo.  Here’s a good example:

Breathtaking. Not only have you shown me that you have great taste in music and TV shows, but also that you aren’t ashamed to show off what your mother gave you.

Another acceptable choice is the “Look at how much fun I am because I drink all the time” photo:

Brilliant. This seems to say “I’m married, but still totally irresponsible and not afraid to post proof of it to the whole world.”

Also acceptable: “This is the cartoon character I look like”, “This is a picture of JUST my car”, and “This is a picture of a baby”.

Anyone can have a professional headshot or family picture that tells you something about the individual as their Facebook picture, but you want to stand out, right?

Now that your profile picture is set, we can really get to work.

Step 2 – The Perfect Status Update

The status update exists as your way to connect with everyone who is interested in you on Facebook. More than 35 million people update their Facebook status at least once a day and those updates are then populated into your friends’ walls and news feeds.  Make sure yours is as inappropriate as possible, preferably one you meant as a personal message to someone else on Facebook (Warning, NSFW Words):

Enthralling! See how this status update truly tells a story?  That’s what you’re going for. Nothing is too personal or “out there” could possibly come back to bite you.

It’s also good to stay completely ignorant on how to delete or edit things you put on the Internet. You probably won’t make any mistakes so it’s best to just not look into such things.

Some people will try to encourage engagement on their Facebook walls by asking a relevant or interesting question and you can go that route if your purpose here is to grow a community and have people like you, but we’re going for that news story or a TV deal.  Keep it racy rather than helpful.

Another acceptable option for your sucky Facebook status is every Tweet you ever Tweet, populated with Twitter lingo that will thoroughly confuse everyone you know who’s not on Twitter. I can’t think of a better afternoon than spending it explaining to 60% of your Facebook friends what “RT” means, why Jeff’s name has an @ in front of it and explaining to your mom that a hashtag has nothing to do with drugs.

Step 3 – Your Super-Sucky Fan Page

If you run a business and have been wondering when this post wold get around to helping you, then look no further because this step is for you. It’s time to talk about setting up your sucky Facebook Fan Page.

The next thing to do is put as little information as possible for your clients and potential customers to interact with. The last thing you want to seem to them is pushy and engaged. Set up your page, make a post and walk away, the rest will take care of itself.

Beautiful. You’re on the right track, but make sure you go into the “Links” tab and add nothing but a link to your poorly-designed homepage. Business ain’t gonna happen on Facebook, after all. Once the “Links” tab is taken care of, make sure there’s nothing of interest on any other tab because Internet users have short attention spans and probably won’t look at it anyway.

You might be tempted to follow in the lead of companies that pay money to have a well-designed, interesting and interactive Facebook page like this:

…but who wants to spend their time talking and engaging on Facebook when you can just filter people into your sales funnel and let gravity take care of the rest?

Step 4 – Acting Like A Sucky-Suck

Engagement is the key on Facebook. The problem with keys is that they open doors to places you don’t know and should probably be afraid of, so don’t mess with them.

The only things you want to use Facebook for if you truly want to suck at it are sales promotions and mini press releases. Facebook allows you up to 420 characters (unlike Twitter, stuck at 140) and you definitely want to use all of them to tell everyone about your latest, boring, sales promotion. I’d also suggest petitioning Facebook to allow you to turn off “Likes”and comments of your updates. What if people want to talk bad about you? We can’t have that.

If you’re going to publish pictures, only use pre-approved, stock, advertising photos because pictures of your actual staff and activities will come off as boring and “human” to others on Facebook. I mean, look at this album Pringles put on their Facebook page of a Glee Mashup Party they had:

Look how much fun they’re having! How can you run a business with all that fun that people want to be a part of floating around the Internets?

Ridiculous. Remember, less human interaction is more when it comes to sucking at Facebook.

Time To Leave The Nest

There are more tips I could teach you to truly suck at Facebook, but I think I’ve given you enough today to get you started. This was the Beginners’ Guide, after all.

You are ready to leave the nest, flap your wings and start crapping all over everyone on Facebook. If it looks like you aren’t making a lot of noise and no one is paying attention you, you’re doing it right and sucking up a storm. But if you feel like you need more help, check out this cartoon by the amazing The Oatmeal about how to be annoying on Facebook. There are some really good tips in there.

Fly, baby birds, fly.

What do you think? What other tips to sucking at Facebook should be on this Beginners’ Guide and what needs to be included in the Advanced Version? Anything important I left off?

Thoughts?

Tags: advice, digital media, embarrassing photos, Facebook Fan Pages, Facebook Marketing, Facebook tips, social media, Status updates, Suck at Twitter, twitter