Archive for Social Media Marketing
How Not To Lose Credibility On The Social Media Sites
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Have you ever walked up to a complete stranger, asked for their Twitter and Facebook profiles, waited politely for 5 minutes and then started shouting at them? If you ever feel tempted, please give me a call first so I can save you from being detained by the men in white coats :)
Well I don’t know where these men in white coats are hanging out these days but I reckon they could make a killing scooping up abnormally behaved people on the Social Networking sites!
I made a new Facebook friend today and I thought (as we probably have some similar interests) that you might have met him, or one of his friends too…
“Dear Michaele (okay let us pronounce it Mikayla!) happy!!
First of all thanks for your message.
Other than my regular assignment, I am presently focussing on one internet online business right from my Laptop. And that is XYZ Company. I hope u might have heard about it. If not, then hurry, dont waste even a single minute. Just go and check this link of my website
http://www.facebook.com/xyz
Yeah truly speaking it is an amazing business opportunity available as on date. Never seen and never heard such an opportunity. Oh my GOD! when I first time heard about it, I did not take a second to jump on it and grab. Now it is mine, my own business and forever mine.
Hey by the way why dont u just check, take a tour, watch the video presentation and if you have any question, come back to me.
lo!!!!!!!!!!! I forgot to wish u a very happy new year 2010.
May this new year bring you and your family a lot of wealth and good health.
Sincerely Yours”
I know, I know, it must be because my profile says “desperately seeking new opportunity; complete strangers, anti relationship marketers, all welcome to submit ” lol. Maybe not!
Aside from these types of messages being mildly annoying/amusing *sigh*, if you’re in Network Marketing you feel a deeper sense of wanting to educate.
I used to try politely educating via 140 character DM’s on Twitter but there’s nothing like the power of a video.
Have you ever been hanging out on one of your favorite Social Media sites only to be rudely interrupted by someone shouting at you?
If so, I would love to hear your thoughts on how we can bring people up to speed on the power of building relationships online.
Shout/spam me a comment below :)
Michaelé
Social Media, Are You Ready For The Future?
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» By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….
» 96% of them have joined a social network
» If Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s 4th largest
» The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
» Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé…
» In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen
» The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube
» Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth
» 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations…Only 14% trust advertisements
» 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation because we no longer search for the news, the news finds us.
If some of those stats surprised you, its gets better… Social Media has now overtaken porn as the number 1 activity on the web.
This is probably one of the most profound developments in business since email and what’s exciting, is it has completely levelled the communication playing field. Never before is history, have we seen Joe Citizen having the ability to connect directly with Authors, Celebrities, Politicians and Centres of influence in our niche. Social Media gives us the opportunity to create powerful relationships FAST.
These days our potential prospects and customers are not only being met through traditional channels like work, hobbies and business networking events, they’re hanging out at places like Twitter, Facebook and Youtube, in their hundreds of millions! With Facebook surpassing 350 million users, do you think some of these people might be interested in working with you?
I thought so!
The big question is, can any of these millions of people find you right now? People are out there every day having conversations about your company, your products and your industry, Doesn’t it make sense to join in on these conversations? After all, they are happening -with or without you!
“In the near future we will no longer search for products and services they will find us via social media…”
The most powerful way to create relationships and increase your warm market through the Social Networking sites is to remember it’s not about you; it’s about providing value to the world so that people are drawn to connect with you. Although you already know you have the most amazing home business opportunity on the planet, people aren’t interested in your opportunity, they’re interested in how you can solve the current problems they face.
Most people don’t yet understand how powerful it is to add Social Media as a business strategy. This is largely because they fail to understand the time it takes to build relationships. It’s not a Spam fest! Your success on the social sites will be directly related to how much value you bring to the table and how many people you help.
A well-known online marketer gave a great analogy using the “Party Principle”. When you go to a party, do you meet someone for the first time and the moment you’re introduced say “Hey, I have this amazing opportunity and we’re currently looking for people just like you, here’s my card, when can we talk”. If you did, you’d probably be looked at as a raving lunatic and the chances of that person ever wanting to speak to you again just went out the door. Hmm, a free lifetime entry into the NFL (No Friends Left) is a likely outcome of that strategy! Think of dating. If you suggested it was time to meet your parent’s after a first date, you’d likely send the person running a mile!
The same applies to the social networking sites, people are primarily there to socialize, make genuine connections and find useful information. They might be open to hearing about what you do once they “know, like and trust” you. We’re in a relationship marketing business, so if your not skilled at building relationships first offline, then this is going to show up online. In fact, your lack of skill will be magnified due to the larger audience.
You can’t just jump onto Twitter and Facebook and hunt down people to Spam your opportunity link to, yet thousands of Network Marketers are out there every day doing exactly that. If you haven’t spent time building the relationship, you haven’t yet ‘earned’ the right to market to that person.
“Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie, Listening first, selling second”
Your success in Social Media will be directly proportionate to the amount of time you’ve spent on developing your ‘people skills’ offline.
How about you, do you think Social Media will change the way we market and communicate?
Do you think there is really any difference in the way we should market online vs offline?
Join in on the conversation and post your thoughts/comments below.
(Stay tuned for part 2 on getting started with Social Media).
P.S. Many thanks to @equalman for permission to use the stats from his awesome video.
How To Use Twitter “Follow Friday” Effectively
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You’ve might have heard of Follow Friday or even seen the #FollowFriday hashtag flying about the Twittosphere, anywhere from Thursday through to Sunday, but did you know there is such a thing as #FF etiquette?
Follow Friday started with one tweet by @Micah in mid January which read:
“I am starting Follow Fridays”. ”Every Friday, suggest a person to follow, and everyone follow him/her”. ”Today its @fancyjeffrey & @wiredone “.
Micah stated, “I started #followfriday to highlight our friends we are proud of”.
Since #FF developed an almost cult like participation, I’ve noticed a growing trend of people sending a bunch of tweets simply listing bulk names like this: @joeblog @maryjoe @janesmith @friend4 @friend5 @friend6 #FollowFriday.
I don’t know about you but I would be unlikely to want to follow someone just because they were one of a bunch of names. At the very least it shows that you are not recommending anyone in particular for any valuable reason and at worst, this can come across as spam!
So what is the most effective way to use Follow Friday?
Just like paying someone a compliment through using the Retweet, the same goes for Follow Friday. Pay the person a compliment by giving people a reason to follow them.
Instead of (@friend1 follow this great person #FollowFriday) or (@friend1 @Friend2 etc #FF).
Simply recommend one friend at a time with something like (@friend1 provides simple, fun tips for growing your Network Marketing business through Facebook groups #FollowFriday). Or (@friend2 she has been an absolute inspiration with her awesome blogging secrets #FollowFriday). If you’re really wanting to create a relationship with a particular person, try including a URL to one of their recent blog posts.
Being generous with your Tweets will reward you enormously, The Law of Reciprocity guarantees it!
I have to admit that one of the reasons I was late to the #FF party, was come Friday, I found I just didn’t have time to go through all my Twitter pages to check who had recently mentioned me in a Tweet etc that I wanted to return the favor too. Well recently, I found a really cool tool that solves that problem: The Twitter Tag Project
Basically you just enter your Twitter username and it will scan your last 200 Tweets for names of people you’ve had contact with and display the results like this: #FollowFriday @friend1 @friend2 @friend3.
Although I don’t recommend using the ‘tweet this’ feature for Follow Friday, what I love about this site is that with the push of a button, it will show you who you’ve had mentions from or interaction with in a simple, one page format.
If you have any fun, simple Follow Friday tips, feel free to post your comments below.
Catch you on Friday @Michaele_H :-)
Social Media has literally changed the Network Marketing industry for ever and you don’t want to miss out.
So lets talk about Social Media, why it’s important to start using it now and what benefits it has to offer us as Network Marketers.
Social Networking through the Internet, offers one of the most powerful solutions to one of the greatest hurdles we face, running out of our warm market.
If you don’t learn about Social Media now and you still think the Internet is a fad, you probably won’t remain successful.
In the past, we gave all kinds of advice on how to continue to build your warm market that are just plain outdated in today’s world. Nowadays there is a pretty simple system that you can follow to make sure your warm market never runs out.
I remember one of things that really jumped out at me from the book Wave 4, was when the author spoke about how all distributors eventually run out of their warm market. “When your team start coming to you with this dilemma, if you don’t have an answer, you will see the attrition rate in your business start to rise”. Yikes!
That message had such an impact on me that I immediately instigated a plan. I developed a list of all the ways I was going to coach my team on how they could increase their warm market, if and when they came to me with this problem. Phew!
Strategies like:
=>Attend small business and franchising expos and gather cards from stall holders
=>Join business-networking groups in your local area
=>Start attending you local Chamber of Commerce meetings
=>Letterbox drops
=>Hang out in Hotel Foyers in a dark suit and stalk people (Just kidding, I heard that one from a friend and thought I would throw it in for a laugh!)
Do these methods work, well they can but they are too slow if you want to build a large organization..
By teaching people how to use Social Media correctly, you can increase your warm market hundreds of times faster than with any of these traditional methods.
Let me give you a really powerful example of how this works.
Traditionally we set up appointments and talk with potential business partners over the phone or in person. If the person is not a friend or family member, a large portion of this meeting time is spent ‘breaking the ice’ and getting to know them. When the meeting ends, we exchange details and then follow up, follow up, follow up.
Fast forward to today and you can be building a relationship with the person through one of the social media sites before you even meet them.
If the timing is right and one of your social networking buddies is at a time in their life where they express they’re open to a new opportunity, you won’t be spending the first half of the meeting breaking the ice as you will have done that long ago.
Then when the meeting ends, instead of filing their details and diligently following up like crazy, the relationship continues to strengthen through one of the online social networks.
We know that people join people they ‘know, like and trust’, so it makes sense to use every opportunity you can to let people get to know you.
This is where learning how to apply Attraction Marketing strategies to build rapport through these Social Networking sites becomes really exciting.
Face Book (which is just one of hundreds of social networking sites), is now rocketing towards 400,000,000 members, do you think some of these people might want to work with you?
The good news is, if you don’t have a clue where to start with online social networking, you can learn these strategies for free.
I’ve been reviewing a lot of training programs available on the internet that teach you the ‘how to’ and found most of them to be quite overwhelming for a new person. Some of them are free and some are around $100 a month.
So far I’ve found that most of these systems have a back office or members area with no clear direction on where a new person should focus their initial efforts. Even worse, there are often enough training videos to sink a ship resulting in new people being sent into information overload.
Recently I came across an awesome training site that eliminates the above confusion AND it’s free. Rather than aimlessly sending a person into a hit and miss back office, it delivers bite sized step by step videos via email. The emails come once every 48hrs so you don’t become overwhelmed.
It was created by a Network Marketer for Network Marketer’s which means the content is laser focused on building your business.
How about you, have you been implimenting Social Media as part of your marketing strategy?
Drop me a line and let me know your successes and struggles in this area.
Michaelé
Useful Tips For Network Marketers On How NOT To Become A Total Twitter Twit!
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1. Attraction: What will initially attract followers are your tweets. So go post at least 5 to 10 updates before you go following anyone. We don’t want your new followers turning up to a blank page! Interestingly you will still get followers if your page is blank but they are probably the kinda followers you want to steer clear of.
2. Credibility: Sorry guys a picture of your pet gold fish and a name like MLM2009 just isn’t going to cut the mustard. You’re out there to socialize, so treat it like you would any ‘offline’ social arena. When you go to a party, you don’t put a paper bag over your head and introduce yourself as MLM2009. I think you get my drift..
3. Relationships: As with the party scenario, if someone wanted to get to know you and asked what you do, you wouldn’t say ‘MLM expert’ or you would sound like a moron! You also wouldn’t answer with a blank stare. So the same thing applies to your bio. Fill it in and make it interesting.
3. Your Opportunity: Come on guys, sheesh EVERYONE including you hates spam. So why the heck would you go out onto a social networking site and spam it with your opportunity all day long. Do you really think people are sitting there just hoping that someone finally spams them with a good business opportunity!
4. Contribution: Unless your name is Paris Hilton or Barak Obama, people aren’t really that interested in the fact that you just made a piece of toast. Don’t get me wrong, if you really did just eat something fascinating or want to mention the restaurant you ate at, then that could be valuable content. Otherwise, leave the mundane activities out of your tweets and save those for when you want to direct message your friends. As far as what is considered ‘valuable’ to your followers, useful and interesting links are what’s hot.
5. Power Through Association: I got this tip from Guy Kawasaki. I’m going to call it the @guru tip! Send @ messages to the social media big dogs. These are the folks with a large number of followers and seem to be the opinion leaders (and perhaps even “heros”) of Twitter. They probably won’t answer you but that’s ok. The aim is to ‘appear’ like you have a relationship with them to enhance your credibility. The theory is “if she is tweeting @MrBigDog, she must be worth following”. It’s not who you know, it’s who ‘appears’ to know you. Apparently! (BTW, when I sent a tweet to Guy Kawasaki, he replied! LOL)
6. Protected updates: Unless your pic suddenly showed up on the ‘’Worlds most Wanted” list or you’re hiding from the KGB, don’t activate this function. Come on, you’re not that special are you!
7. Etiquette: The greatest compliment you can pay anyone on Twitter is to RT (re-tweet) their Tweet. Do this when you have genuinely found someone’s Tweet interesting, funny or valuable, not just because everyone else is re-tweeting.
8. Bankruptcy: Until you reach 2000 followers, don’t go following more than about 100 people a day. Twitter changes the rules regularly so you don’t want to trigger a ‘Mosey along now, this account has been suspended’!
9. The Terminator: This is possibly the most important piece of info you might read if you work for a company. Be careful what you Tweet. Tweeting “My boss is so dumb he doesn’t realize I’m building my online empire while he’s paying me to work!” might not be the smartest move. Remember the Cisco fiasco where 1 tweet screwed up a potential high paying job: http://ciscofatty.com/
10. Who’s Who: My personal list of the top 10 ‘must follow’.
GuyKawasaki Well his name speaks for himself plus I gotta recommend him considering I used his tip!
JoelComm Author of Twitter Power and a Social Media Evangelist
DaveEvans Social Media Consultant and author of Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day.
MariSmith Dubbed the Pied Piper of the Online World by Fastcompany. The ‘Queen’ of FaceBook.
PerryBelcher Seriously Bad Ass Marketer (his words) and also known as The ‘King’ of Youtube.
Mashable The hottest Twitter tips news and help around. Plus the best Social Media links online.
AskMrVideo Ask him any question on video production, literally.
RichSchefren Known as the ‘Guru’ to the internet guru’s. Seriously kick butt free documents for online entrepreneur’s.
