With all this talk/hype about social media, I’m beginning to think we’re all new media douchebags. The plethora of “how to” articles and posts on ways to increase your followers, friends, fans, and other cult hangers-on seem to be regurgitating what Dale Carnegie wrote about long ago (1936) in How to Win Friends and Influence People. Even then, Carnegie was working off of case studies that he’d culled into his 1934 workshops.

Check out some of Carnegie’s core principles and see if any of it rings a bell:

Fundamental Techniques in Handling People:

• Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.
• Give honest and sincere appreciation.
• Arouse in the other person an eager want.

Six Ways to Make People Like You:

1. Become genuinely interested in other people.
2. Smile.
3. Remember that a man’s Name is to him the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
4. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
5. Talk in the terms of the other man’s interest.
6. Make the other person feel important and do it sincerely.

The strategies haven’t changed, people: it’s only the tools that have evolved.

We may couch these terms in more marketing-friendly speak – I don’t think I’d ever recommend a client to “arouse in the other person an eager want” for fear of promoting sexual harassment – but they’re all the same principles we espouse in the 2.0 universe. The updated version, for social media-ites:

• Don’t be bitchy…unless you’re witty about it.
• Show respect and appreciation.
• Appeal to people’s passions and interests.
• Use smilies to connote tone (or be prepared for your pithy comment to be misunderstood)
• Remember that a person’s “@username” is to them the sweetest and most important item to include in Twitter posts

The tools will continue to evolve. Mobile is here. Web 3.0 – “the intelligent web” – is already in play. Soon, we’ll have bio-chips embedded in our prefrontal cortices that connect directly to our optic and auditory nerves, capable of transmitting information directly to/from the interwebs. Ok, maybe not so soon.

But at the end of the day, the point of all this media – traditional, old, new, social, whatever – is to communicate with people … and I imagine that how to win and influence them will remain the same. Respect. Appreciate. Listen. Share.