MLM and Network Marketing - Blogging

This is the first in a series of articles I'll be doing on blogging. Blogging is one of the most important aspects of setting yourself up professionally in social media. It's the perfect way to introduce yourself, establish yourself as an expert and showcase your products and services. It's your hub, your nerve center - the place to which you want to direct all your social media traffic. So your blog link should be on all your social media sites and you should drive your friends and followers to your blog - and, as you gain followers and prominence, you can generate significant leads to your own products and services.

In fact, blogs have become part of social media and website visitors' expectations - they expect to see a link to your blog. And they're fun! But even more important, they can change your business dramatically. Most mentors will tell you that you must have a blog to be successful in MLM and network marketing. So if you want to be really successful, you'll want to develop your own blog.

It's not that hard. You don't have to be a great author. Start simply and write about things you know - and write in everyday, conversational language so that you are easily understandable. But before you get started, take a bit of time to consider what direction you want your blog to take. Content is king on blogs. So consider carefully what you want to accomplish and what you want to write about. I think it's crucial to formulate your blog's general framework and direction before you really dive in. You want your blog to specifically promote you as an expert, a person of value in your field, so focus on your niche.

I'll be getting into a lot more detail in future articles and especially where to set up your blog. But for now, take some time to think about what you want your blog to be.

MLM and Network Marketing - Social Media - Facebook Part 2

In Facebook, you want to stand out from the crowd. So once you have a really good picture and profile page set up and have started adding your friends (especially from groups in which you are interested), it's really important that you're consistent, have a good message, a powerful unique stance and that you network effectively. Take the time to build relationships with your new friends - and always add value!

Sure, it's a social site, so by all means chat with your friends a bit, but don't get bogged down and addicted. And don't try to do too much at once. Leverage your time. Trickle in your photos and videos, tag people appropriately. Set up links from your blog, You Tube and Twitter (but be careful - if you tweet a lot on Twitter, you probably don't want to link Twitter to Facebook). And make sure you stay up-to-date on your Inbox.

One of the first things you should do on Facebook is to create your own Fan Page. It's easy to do, just click on the pages and ads icon at the lower left of your Facebook page, click on pages and create a page). The beauty of Fan Pages is that you can do things on your page that you can't do on your Facebook profile. And you can have an unlimited number of fans, though I believe Facebook limits the number of pages that you can join to 500. Make your fan page updates interesting and informative, but still do not focus on your new business opportunity - you can be reported for spamming here as well, so be careful. Use you page to direct people to your hub (blog). And remember to invite people to join your fan page when you're thanking them for confirming you as a friend (add your Fan Page link to your thank you note). You can even buy ads for your fan page if you wish.

Another very important aspect of Facebook is its Group feature. You can join groups (I believe the current limit that you can join is 200). Join groups in which you are interested, especially groups with like-minded business people. It's an absolutely ideal way to find new friends and develop relationships with other business-oriented people or those who share your personal hobbies and other interests.

Better yet, create your own group. Again, click on the group icon at the bottom left of your Facebook page, click on Create a Group, and set up your very own (remember to invite new friends here as well). You are the administrator of your own group (you have the option to give that authority to others as well but I don't recommend it). That means that you set up and control the criteria for your group. You want to give this some thought, so draft out your basic purpose and criteria for your group, and what you want to allow members to do. I'd recommend checking out a few similar groups to see what others have done in setting them up.

I use my group to add value and provide informational business content, to announce webinars, post my notes on those webinars and to alert my members to things I find that might either be useful or income-generating. It can be a very handy way of marketing through the sharing of information and free items (e.g., webinars or other presentations).

There's lots more about Facebook that can be extremely useful. And I have another source book that you might find valuable to help you along the way - it's the fifth printing (2009) of Steven Holzner's Facebook Marketing - Leverage Social Media to Grow Your Business - as usual, it's in bookstores or available through Amazon.

MLM and Network Marketing in Social Media - Facebook

Facebook! The mega-gorilla of the social networks, ranked second among sites with 350 million users. Some say it will surpass Google in the not too distant future. So of course, you want to build relationships there if your serious about developing your new business through social media. It's probably the most viral social media site. And it's fun.

Setting up your profile is key. I've talked about it before. Your picture should be professional and friendly, and the information you put in about yourself needs to be transparent, complete, interesting and informative. Don't make the 'About You' section too long, but keep in mind that your profile page is how people get to know you. So you want to convey a likable, trustworthy and personable portrait of you on your profile. Let people get a bird's-eye view of you and your life.

Facebook is an ideal place to post pictures - it's a photo scrapbook. And you should post videos there too. Both are very important tools to grow your circle of friends by showcasing you, your family, your pets, your hobbies and what you are interested in. (More about this later.)

Keep in mind, however, that Facebook is SOCIAL. So don't start beating your new friends over the head with your business opportunities. You'll be designated as a spammer and lose your account. Facebook's rules are quite strict, so be careful. You want to use Facebook to draw people to your hub, your blog - that's where you'll market directly.

Facebook currently limits you to 5,000 friends (there's some indication they may expand that number, but for now, that's the limit). Sounds like a lot, doesn't it? Well, quite a few people I know are at that level, and many more are closing in. It's not that hard to build a large circle of like-minded friends. There are plenty of ways to expand this - through Fan Pages and Groups, about which I'll also talk more in a later blog.

Your Facebook page has four labels in the upper left: Home, Profile, Friends, Inbox and to the right side, Your Name, Settings, Logout and a box in which you can Search for people or groups. Once you get set up and select your settings, get started by adding a few friends (you can import your email address book, if you like, or former classmates). But if you are trying to build a business, you want to add friends who are like-minded. So I recommend you use the Search feature. Type in areas in which you are interested professionally - mlm, mlm groups, going green, health, wellness, photography, etc., etc.

Groups are a great place to find friends who have similar interests. So if you type in 'mlm groups,' a list of those groups will come up. Click on any of the groups, join it, go down to the list of group members, click on 'see all' and start adding those group members as friends. But remember to send a message with your friends request (you can set one up on your word files and copy it into your message box)- keep it short and personal, something like "I saw you in the XYZ group and wanted to connect with you. I hope you'll confirm me as your friend." And when they confirm you (and most will), send a direct message back thanking them and starting a conversation (not a sales pitch!). And from here, just repeat the process, but don't do more than 30-40 per day - Facebook won't like it if you add too many friends at once.

Regularly check your Home page and it's NewsFeed and Live NewsFeed and make sure you participate in the conversations. and don't forget to monitor your Inbox and stay up to date on your messages. But, a word of caution. Facebook can be addictive, so don't let yourself get too hung up. Spend an hour or so in the morning and maybe a bit more occasionally throughout the day or evening. But remember, you're developing a business and you need to be focused on that.

More Facebook detail will be forthcoming in my next blog.

Twittering Tips to Build Your MLM & Network Marketing Business

Happy New Year to all of you! I got a bit distracted by all the holiday festivities. But I'm back in gear and ready to move this Basic Guide to Thoroughbred MLM and Network Marketing along briskly this year.

In social media, it really is all about building your relationships with others. And Twitter is a great place to start. It's your billboard - a great vehicle by which you can attract people to you and direct them to other sites and, most importantly, to your blog.

I found a great general resource that has helped me get started on Twitter. It's Joel Comm's book, Twitter Power - How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time, published by John Wiley & Sons in 2009. You can purchase it on Amazon.com (new or used) for under $20, some used versions are around $10 (it retails for about $30+ in bookstores). I strongly recommend it.

As you get started, remember that your goal is to be a quality Tweeter. So use your own name and brand yourself. Set your profile and background up with careful thought - and make sure you have your key link there (your blog or website). Start tweeting with real, personal information about you - you can tweet about your location, what you like to do, food that you like (recipes are great), childhood memories, dreams and goals, pets, music/art/movies/books/politics. Find things about which people are talking and get involved (a good site to use to see what is attracting the most interest is popurls.com). Most important, be yourself and talk back to the people with whom you connect - that's key to relationship building.

Finding targeted people to follow is important and it's easy to do (but keep in mind that you shouldn't follow more than 50 people a day to start and then keep your additions to 10% of the number of your followers each day - Twitter will shut you down if it thinks you are spamming). You can do a general search on Twitter, for example, on mlm, or network marketing, or any area of interest to you. Click on the tweeters who come up and follow them - most people you follow will automatically follow you back. Also, when you follow people, you can see who else is following them and add those people as well.

And start to retweet other people's tweets that you find interesting or informative - that's hugely important because you can get many people to retweet your crucial messages to their followers (it's sort of reciprocal) - it's an incredibly effective way to expand your own reach.

You'll want to be able to shorten and your links on Twitter because of the 140 character limitation to all tweets. Bud.url (open a free account) is a simple tool that will enable you to shorten your links - there are many others that you can also use that also track clicks. Twitpwr.com is one which Joel Comm cites because it not only shortens urls, tracks all clicks and also ranks accounts according to their power. Twittergrader.com is another site I like because I can see my ranking readily.

And you'll want Tweetdeck (to group tweets and followers by subject) and Social Oomph (formerly TweetLater), which allows you to set up automatic follows to people who follow you and to schedule your tweets in advance. One word of caution on Social Oomph, Twitter has discontinued allowing recurring tweets, so all of your scheduled tweets need to be original.

You can get a bit lost wending your way through all the stuff on Twitter, which is why I recommend Joel Comm's book as a starting point. It's got a ton of detail and you can work through it steadily and easily.