It’s no secret that online video is one of the most powerful marketing mediums on the planet.

Creating your first however, can be a huge challenge. After all, there’s shyness to overcome,  technical knowledge to learn and a reasonable amount of time commitment to make them look professional.  If you fall into that category,  all of your excuses are about to be swept from under your feet!  I’m about to show you a video branding tool that is super fast and easy to use, that will skyrocket your credibility.  It’s called Google Search Stories Video Creator and you’ll find it on YouTube.

In under 5 minutes this powerful little gem will allow you to create a video from Google’s search results all about you.  You can choose results from blogs, images, news and general search.  Choose your music, add a title and with the click of one button, your masterpiece is uploaded directly to YouTube! Imagine the boost to your credibility having a video that shows all of the Google search results on your brand.  But the power doesn’t end there…

Google Search Stories Video Creator is also a powerful way of telling a story.

As well as the obvious plus for your personal branding, you can also create stories around your affiliate products, your Network Marketing opportunity and just about anything else you can think of.  Rather than show you an example of a personal video, I decided to have some fun and create a video about the founders of my Tribe Community.

If you don’t want your Search Story to look like everyone elses, here’s how to stand out from the crowd and take your video to the next level.

Check out the updated video below compared to the first video and I think you’ll agree, the extra 8 seconds in length, makes a difference. Oh and just a tiny thing I forgot to mention…. By the time I woke up the next day, this video was ranked number 4 for the search term ‘Social Media Tribes’.  How cool is that for SEO 101!

Ok so lets dig in to how to create one!

This is getting slightly more technical but I promise it’s still easy, and will take you an extra 15 minutes.  You do want to stand out don’t you ;-)

• Take your newly created masterpiece and download it from YouTube to your computer.
• While logged into your YouTube account, click on my videos and find the Search Stories Video you just created.
• Now you should see Edit, Insight and a downward pointing drop down arrow.
• Click on this and select Download MP4

Now your masterpiece in the making is on your computer!

Next head over to OneTrueMedia and create a Premium account ($3.99 a month).

• Login and click on create.
• Go to add images and video clips and click upload photos and video.
• The next screen will say select files so choose the name of the file you just downloaded from Youtube.
• Repeat this step and upload a powerful graphic or logo that has to do with your message.
• Next ignore all the options to add music text etc and go straight to Edit & Sequence.  Now you will see your uploaded files.
• Make sure your graphic is before the video file and click directly on it.
• Leave all the properties as they are and click on effects.
• Choose an effect from the dropdown menu, save it and you’re almost done!

Final tip:  Download the video directly to your computer before uploading to Youtube as it removes the OneTrueMedia branding.

Now the reason we want to leave all the properties as they are and  just choose and apply an effect, is to save time. This is one of those cool services that have a million and one options but we don’t want to be there fluffing around all day!  If you like the effect I chose, it’s called Metropolis.

If you’ve made your own Search Story, make sure you come back and post your link in the comments, I’d love to see it.  Did you think the extra time spent over at One True Media was worth the effort?  Post a comment below and let me know your thoughts on this incredibly simple, yet powerful tool.

Michaelé

Technorati Tags: michaele harrington, tribe syndication, video marketing

If you’ve ever questioned the value of being involved with an online Tribe Syndication community that generates activity for your site, think again!

The latest update to Googles indexing alogorithim, otherwise known as the ‘Caffeine Update’ has now made ‘activity’ more important than ever before.

Here is a snippet from Google ‘s official announcement:  “Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index, and it’s the largest collection of web content we’ve offered. Whether it’s a news story, a blog or a forum post, you can now find links to relevant content much sooner after it is published than was possible ever before”.

So essentially, including ‘fresher results’ now means that Google is indexing social activity such as Twitter, Facebook, comments etc at lightening speed.

Over the last few months I’ve watched top affiliate marketers make it to the first page of Google (and even hit # 1) for their keyword in under a week.  Guess what their secret has been?  An intricate combination of activity!

Here are a few of their secrets to getting first page rankings…

Generating link activity to their site by commenting on other high PR sites, waiting for the comment to be approved and then ‘pinging’ the search engines to let them know there’s been ‘activity’ on the site through services such as http://pingoat.net .

Writing 10 ‘keyword’ specific articles and submitting them to a powerful combination of social networking sites, article sites and social bookmarking sites.  Followed by pinging the newly created URL’s and then creating rss feeds.  Submitting the feeds to the top feed aggregators.  (This was all done in a specific, well planned order).

If all this pinging and submitting sounds confusing, don’t worry it was for me too!  The above strategy seemed quite complex at first until finally the penny dropped.  It all boiled down to ‘activity’!  Of course these guys were expert affiliate marketers and so they had their sites correctly optimized for their keywords but…  A significant part of their first page results came from a calculated amount of pinging, comments etc that all led to letting Google know their site was alive and kicking!

Whilst relevant quality backlinks still remain an important factor, ‘freshness’ of content has never been more important. And guess what counts as fresh content on your blog…  If you guessed comments, you’re correct.

If you don’t have a high traffic site that ‘organically’ creates lots of activity, RSS subscribers, pings etc, the way to get the big Google bot’s attention is to join an online tribe community that creates the activity for you.  Imagine how much more powerful the above strategies could have been for these guys if they had a tribe submitting their content to 43 social bookmarking sites using powerful tools like Onlywire.

So how can a tribe leverage from Google’s Caffeine Update?

If you’re a part of an online tribe community, no doubt you’ve already witnessed some pretty amazing results for your personal blog.  Now imagine taking these results and catapulting your marketing efforts into the stratosphere, by creating a specialized ‘content pinging’ tribe within your community.  So instead of just concentrating on your blog, they use Onlywire to ping your Ezine articles, your hubs, your lenses, your opportunity reviews etc etc.  Now thats what I call powerful!  In fact in the age of Google ‘caffeine’, you’d be crazy not to brainstorm ideas on forming more advanced marketing tribes within your community.  I know I will be after this post :)

If you have any thoughts to add on the recent changes to Google’s indexing algorithm, I’d love to hear from you in the comments section below.  I’d also love to hear what kind of advanced strategies you’re using within your tribe.

Michaelé

Technorati Tags: blog traffic, blogging, michaele harrington, online tribes

Have you ever wondered why your Network Marketing team isn’t duplicating as fast as you’d like?
Depending on how closely you’ve looked at the culture you’re creating within your organization, these 3 key points could be the make or break in your teams success.

Are your new team members motivated by money or recognition?
Have you immunized them against rejection and taught them how to celebrate low points?
Are they immediately armed with the tools they need to get a new person started independently of you?

Ok so lets dive straight into the first crucial step in creating a downline explosion for your team.
If you thought money was the only motivator behind someone joining your team, think again!
When you were a child, if your teacher had have given you a choice of earning $20 to or the chance to be recognized as the top achiever in your chosen passion, which would you have taken? I suspect recognition would have outweighed the $20.

Fast forward to adulthood, not only do people rarely receive recognition, they already feel they have failed in many areas of their life. They can’t pay bills on time, they can’t make their kids first soccer match, they have to be at an important meeting the day of their daughters first ballet performance.

Now, added to their already stressfull life, you’ve offered a possibility for them to get out of silent desperation, a chance for them to feel successful and acknowledge their capabilities.  So driven and excited to change their circumstances, they follow your coaching.  They call 20 warm market people, or create their first ad or get started with social media.   So far they’ve had zero sales, one guaranteed sign up who bailed and one totally abusive email. Are you on the phone celebrating with them?  You should be and here’s why…

The Law Of The First (small) Win.

Mark Hoverson covers this in his training on Transformational Teaching vs Dictatorial Teaching.
Quote “People will return to the place where they feel appreciated, validated, inspired, challenged and helped in growth.”
The key here is to make it incredibly simple for people to feel achievement. You must acknowledge and applaud ANY and ALL progress!

The first time they pick up the phone to talk to someone.
The first time someone hangs the phone up on them.
Their first piece of content.
Their first guaranteed sign up that bails.

How do you applaud and have your team celebrating the so called negatives?  Because you immunize them from day 1.
It’s critical to be absolutely honest about what they might encounter and what it really takes from the moment they start, if not beforehand.

Tell them right from the beginning:

“Hey, you are going to catch people on a bad day that might hang the phone up.”

“You might get so called ‘big hitters’ who join you and do nothing, but thats ok because the fact that you attracted such a high calibre person means you’ll do it again”.

That person who absolutely promised they were joining, suddenly doesn’t return your call. “Thats ok, people do that kind of stuff, it’s just human nature.”

The key here is to keep your team feeling like they are winning and progressing, even throughout the setbacks.

If you want people to duplicate, you need to tell them everything you’ve done to learn and grow. Don’t hold back on the courses you’ve done, the amount of books you’ve read, the weekends you gave up, the late nights. There is no need to be in fear that this will overwhelm or be too much for someone new. People will move mountains to send their kids to the right school. But they can’t do this in your opportunity if you play down what it takes.

Another reason duplication stagnates, is because your new team members don’t know what to do with somebody new. They don’t have the confidence in getting their own new recruit started, so they subconsciously block attracting any new team members.

This is where a welcome system and blueprint is critical.

Without this, not only will you create a needy downline that need you for everything, you won’t have a template for newbies to duplicate. This blueprint is where you cover your team training resources, corporate resources and training, tech support, your availability and basically set the culture for your team. A simple one page site works best, but if you don’t have the resources to create one, a free premium blog setup with a static page will work just as well.

Let’s cover some ideas for this webpage to get your team duplicating and working almost independent from you.

• Welcome video and overview on what’s included on the page and why they need to follow it.
• Point out the importance of signing in to your autoresponder system so they can stay plugged in to team updates.  (Keep this part as close as possible to the top of the page and emphasize the importance of opting in immediately)
• Give a brief overview on what they are about to embark on and what it’s going to take to realize their goals. Be honest and down to earth here. This is not the time to be hypey about your opportunity. They are already ‘sold’ on your business so now is the time to get into the meat and potatoes.

Next, go through the exact steps they need to take in order to be fully plugged in to all of the available resources. Write a blurb under each step explaining the importance of completing certain tasks immediately. Weave parts of your own story into the tasks to make them relatable. E.g. “When I first started, I had no idea what an autoresponder was and used to spend xyz amount of hours each week just updating people individually. Now I can be in Fiji with my family, knowing Aweber is sending out my welcome emails.”

Make it crystal clear that their sponsor is not the ‘go to’ person for technical questions but include where they can go for help with each step. E.g. Godaddy has excellent 24/7 tech support that can walk you through a domain redirect, Aweber has video tutorials and live chat etc. Become comfortable with telling people to ‘google it’. If you allow your team to call you every time they are stuck, your will create a needy downline that will drive you nuts! This welcome page is a chance for you to instill a culture of independance from day 1.

1. For our weekly training webinars, register here.
2. Upcoming live events are listed here. Check the next event now.
3. Business overview webinars times are listed here.
4. Enter your details here for corporate updates.
5. I use and highly recommend Aweber for your autoresponder, click here to set up your account.

In the next part of the page, you want to cover some of the courses/resources that helped you get started. If you are an affiliate for any of the products you recommend, it’s a no brainer to use your own links. Again maximize this by weaving your own story in. What this course taught me, why I couldn’t do without this resource etc.

The final part of the page is where you really get into the nitty gritty with the focus being on leverage, independance and duplication.

• Clearly state your hours of availability.
• Clearly state corporates hours and contact details.
• Be crystal clear about questions that should be directed to corporate e.g. my product hasn’t arrived, I can’t login to my back office, will my left arm drop off if I take X product with such and such medication etc etc.

Network Marketing offers an incredible opportunity to create financial freedom, however without setting the foundations from day one, you can easily find yourself in back in full time job, full of needy volunteers.

How you welcome people into your business, sets the bar for how they will (or won’t) bring other new people into their business.

How you applause a new person, also sets the bar for how your newbies will applaud and acknowledge other new team members.

I would love to hear what systems you’re using in your business to ensure newbies feel competent in duplicating.
Please do pop your thoughts/suggestions in below so others in the community can benefit.

Michaelé

Technorati Tags: michaele harrington, Network Marketing, network marketing duplication

If you’ve ever been on some of the big name sites and noticed a cool little icon in the address bar, you might have wondered what they’re called.

In todays post, I want to introduce you to Favicons.

Previously I’ve spoken about the importance of creating a Gravatar.  Then of all things I discover there is such a thing as a Blavatar!  I’m not going to go into what a Blavatar is because its only applicable to wordpress.com sites and I know that as an entrepreneur, you already have a wordpress.org self hosted site :)

So as a WP.org user, basically a Blavatar is a ‘Favorite Icon’ or a Favicon.

What you might not have known is these little 16 x 16 pixel icons are a powerful addition to your online branding.

When I first started researching a ‘go around’ for eliminating the need to pay a web designer to create one, I hit a few of road blocks that I was determined to solve.
Firstly creating one was easy, just google “create favicon” and loads of sites will show up. The problem was that once I created one, every site I went to said something like “After generating a favicon with this tool download and save to the root directory of your site. Then include the following code in the head of your HTML document”. Huh? Did I mention I’m not a techie person!

So after sifting through outdated and manual upload plugin options galore, I found the perfect solution to have you up and running in minutes.

Ok so it might have taken you 10 minutes but in any case, by now you should have your own Favicon.

If I missed anything or you have any other great plugin suggestions, please share them in the comments section below.

Michaelé

Technorati Tags: blog branding, favicon, how to create a favicon, michaele harrington, personal branding

Have you ever given out your email address to opt-in to a ‘secret training tips or special offer’, only to find that the video you were sent is already on YouTube for all to see?

I know I have and it’s annoying as it leaves you with a feeling of being misled.  There is nothing secret or exclusive about a video that’s already on Youtube!  Not only is this damaging for your brand, it’s kinda weird for your viewers to be watching a video that is welcoming people to a sales page and/or saying “On the next page you will see xyz” when the person is not on your sales page but watching it on Youtube.

Up until now, the problem wasn’t that it was impossible to share private videos with your list or as part of your free report, it’s just that it wasn’t easy.  You could fluff around working out how to use Viddlers ‘sercret URL’ function, or pay to host your videos else where but there was nothing super simple about either of these options.  YouTube had a ‘private’ option that could be shared with up to 25 people, but not only was the cap a problem, the viewers needed to also have a YT account!

Today, all of that changed!

In an effort to help students keep their videos private and yet still have the ability to share with their parents and classmates, YouTube has just introduced ‘Unlisted Videos’.

Adding value to your MLM list just became easier with this new feature from YouTube

So from a marketing perspective, this now means you have a powerful new tool to use in your email campaigns.  With the tick of a box, your videos will no longer show up on your channel, in the search results or on public pages (unless of course, someone decides to share your link).

The other feature that I’m super excited about is ‘Unlisted’ Embed codes for your Blogs and Marketing Funnels.  The YouTube blog and FAQ’s don’t seem to have covered this but I was able to make it work when I tested it.  I’ve  made one of the videos on this blog ‘Unlisted’ and it still plays!  So until YouTube covers Unlisted Embed codes in their FAQ’s I would say the easiest way to do it is to upload a public video, grab the embed code and then change it to Unlisted once you have finished.

Ok so who is now itching to scoot off and remove some of those funky sales page video intros and other stuff that doesn’t make sense to a new viewer from your YouTube channel? :-)

If you found this post helpful, please share it will your community and leave your comments below.

Technorati Tags: michaele harrington, mlm follow up, network marketing auto responders, YouTube unlisted videos

I’ve been noticing lately that so many really well designed blogs, that have awesome content, still lack an important crucial aspect….

Social proof and a sense of community!

It kinda got me thinking of the analogy of being invited to a party at the best looking house in your street. At first glance, it seems inviting because it’s well designed (just like many blogs).

Yet when you arrive and take a look around, you discover this house you admire actually has no guests.  Right then and there you probably felt like going home (clicking off the page) but in the spirit of being a great guest, you decide to stick around for a few moments.

You then hear that this party did in fact have many guests, even though at the time you didn’t see any proof of their attendance…

In the blogging world, one of the fastest ways to increase loyalty is to build community.  In order to ‘build community’, firstly you need social proof of the communities existence and secondly you need proof that you actively engage with your community.  With all of the funky tools available today, it’s super simple to display your social proof through Retweet buttons, interactive commenting and community widgets that people can ‘join’, ‘like’, ‘friend’ etc.

I have to admit that when I started blogging, I totally missed the point on how important it was to ‘engage’ and build community.  In fact I was so far off the mark with understanding how important this was, that I didn’t even reply to the few people who left comments!!  It wasn’t until I became involved with the Empowered Tribe community that I realized the powerful relationship opportunities I was missing out on.  Not to mention all the traffic I was literally ‘scaring’ away lol.

Since you’re probably far more ‘with it’ than I was when I started out, lets get straight to the tools that literally turned my blog around!

1.  Google Friend Connect: If you don’t have this installed, you want to get it ASAP.  It doesn’t matter how good looking your house is, if there are no ‘visible’ guests, people will be unlikely to come back. Installing this widget will not only add a sense of ‘community’ to your Blog, it will display ‘social proof’ that others value your site too.

2.  Comment luv: This plugin is an awesome way to reward your readers for leaving a comment on your blog.  Basically what it does is it auto-generates a featured link of the title of your commenters last blog post.  I like to think of it as the ultimate reciprocity plugin!

3.  Wordpress Thread Comment: This little gem has completely revolutionized what was once one big nonsensical mess lol.  If you’re like me, you don’t always reply to comments the day they are left.  What happens then is when you do reply to a person, your comment just ends up on top of the last comment which might be from a completely different person.  So basically the entire comment thread has no flow and doesn’t make sense.  Well not once you install WP thread Comment plugin!  Oh and if you’re wondering if you install it now will it ‘nest’ all of your current comments, the answer is yes.  Quite ingenious really :)

4.  Linkwithin Widget: This one caught my eye one day when I came across a Blog post on google while researching a particular topic.  As I finished reading the article that had caught my attention, this funky little widget boldly suggested “You might also like this…” and displayed 5  visual thumbnails of other posts.  Well the widget was right, I did also like some of the other blog posts!  So instead of leaving the person’s blog after a few minutes, I left about half an hour later!  What an incredible way to increase ‘stickiness’.  You can grab your widget by clicking here.

Tip 1: For it to work effectively, it scans for pictures to produce the thumbnails so make sure you add pictures to every post before you install the widget.

Tip 2: When entering your details to grab the code, it will ask if you would like to display up to 5 thumbnails.  Even if you don’t yet have 5 blog posts, choose the option for 5 anyway so that you don’t have to go back later and generate a new code as your blog posts grow.

5.  Homepage Excerpts: You might have noticed that on a lot of blogs, each and every post is displayed on the home page in its entirety.  There is nothing wrong with this but it does make it difficult for people to ‘scan’ your content  to find another post that might be interesting to them.  Once you install this plugin, you have the option to choose how many of your posts display in full on your home page. The rest will then convert into nice little tempting paragraphs which allow your reader to quickly scan and jump to the post that most interests them.  Personally I like to have only my most recent blog post displayed in full and let ‘Linkwith’ & Homepage Excerpts work their magic :)

There are loads of amazing plugins and widgets out there that can add all kinds of incredible features and functionality to your blog.  These are just 5 that I use to increase page views, encourage and reward comments and engagement and build community.

If you’ve found a plugin or funky widget thats made a big difference to your blog, leave me a comment as I love hearing about these cool little add ons :)

Michaelé

P.S. It goes without saying that Tweetmeme and Simple Facebook Share buttons are ‘must haves’ for content syndication!

Technorati Tags: blog traffic, blogging, michaele harrington, social media

Ever noticed a company replicated capture page that says “You can have your very own website,  just like this one”?

If you have, then that statement alone should be an alarm bell and I’ll talk more about why in a moment.

On the surface, most of these replicated sites look pretty darn sexy, use the latest in technology (or do they?) and seem to cover every possible detail about your amazing company and products.  If you’re brand new to the industry, the thought of having your own sizzling hot marketing website can seem very appealing.

The problem is, people are attracted to joining your opportunity because you are offering them a solution to their pain.  If a person has worked a 9-5 job for decades, they are likely to have resolved that a solution to their pain doesn’t exist.  They may be completely operating from survival mode and so their ability to dream big has been left somewhere back in childhood.  Our job, is to reconnect that person back with their dreams and goals and help them to see new possibilities.

A replicated website shows them a fantastic product, management team, comp plan etc etc, but it doesn’t show them how it’s all going to work for them. At this stage, the opportunity being presented might be interesting but in your prospects eyes it’s all just a pipe dream.  It’s only through connecting and creating a relationship with you, that they can start to see how it’s possible for it to work for them.

Unfortunately, many MLM replicated sites allow you do little more than display your name, number and perhaps a photo. They do very little to connect you with your prospects.

But they are designed by multi million dollar companies, wouldn’t they know best?

Well firstly, due to our friends at the FTC, most MLM companies are shaking in their boots over compliance issues. The marketing arm of many great companies has been suffocated by the legal department, resulting in very limited, if any, customization of these cookie cutter websites.  Not great if you want to stand out from the other tens, if not hundreds of thousands of distributors marketing your opportunity!

Secondly, people join people and not opportunities.  Yet most replicated websites are not geared for creating personal connections (yet!).  They don’t have powerful relationship building avenues to ‘Follow You On Twitter’ , ‘Connect with you on Facebook’ or ‘Contact You On Skype’.  They send out ‘old style’ marketing emails otherwise known as ‘push’ or ‘shout’ marketing, with no opportunity for you to further your relationship with your prospect.

Thirdly, they often have very poorly written sales copy, way to many links (that can send people into information overload right from the get go) and no clear call to action.

Let me give you an example of a reputable ‘A’ company’s replicated website that I recently tested.

Step one: I entered my details on the distributors capture page (which gave me no opportunity to connect or learn more about them).  I also didn’t enter my phone number.

Step two: I received a prewritten company email in my inbox which read:

Michaelé,

What if you could start your own business where:

• You already have proven products
• You didn’t have to deal with the headache of manufacturing and inventory
• You already had the perfect website
• The shipping was done for you for free
• You never had to do payroll or manage employees
• At the end of the week, you get a check!

You Can!!!

But guess what, this is one of only a tiny handful of company written automated emails I ever received from this poor distributors website!

Yet according to the US Executive Sales Association, only 2% of sales are made from the first exposure, yet 80% of sales come from between the 5th to the 12th exposure!!  So this distributor was using a self replicating website, that had no ability for them to create relationships (when we are in a relationship marketing business!), and was completely reliant on the companies ability to create a connection between the prospect and their potential business partner.  As I didn’t leave my phone number, they were left with very little chance of exposing me to their opportunity 5-12 times.

The company emails ended with a link to ‘learn more’ or ‘contact us’.

Here is the kicker… I clicked on ‘contact us’ and guess where it took me?  Not to the distributor so I could ask questions and build a relationship, it took me to the corporate contact page!!

Then I clicked on ‘learn more’ and it took me back to the replicated site.  Drum roll as I share how many shiny new toys I was presented with to get distracted/confused by…  In short, just on the home page alone, I was given a total of 14 places to click!!

So while we wait for many MLM companies to come into the 21st century and produce replicated sites that focus on relationship marketing, what’s the solution?

If you were just aiming to keep your prospect laser focused on your companies most powerful tools, you could head over to Free Web Templates and create your own.  Grab a template that allows you to embed 1 or 2 of your companies hottest videos, customize it and away you go.  While this option cuts down on distraction and overwhelm by not offering so many shiny tools to click on, it’s still not geared to build the relationship.

By far the most logical solution is to build ‘YOU INC’.

Building your YOU INC brand is not a new concept in Network Marketing, however it is still not widely being taught. Setting this up allows you to profit being you, rather than profit from marketing a company that you don’t own.

I see so many people In Network Marketing getting hung up on how many levels deep their Comp Plan pays or the Orac score of their nutritional product, yet the real power is in none of the above.  Your primary focus should be on how to become more valuable to your target market.

If your company has hundreds of thousands of distributors, there is every chance that your prospect has already been approached about your opportunity. What’s going to make the difference in who they decide to join is YOU.

If you can show that you have valuable skills, that the majority of distributors don’t,  you’re guaranteed to have more people joining your opportunity.

So lets talk about the basics of getting ‘YOU INC’ up and running.

If your building your warm market and incorporating social media strategies, you need a central hub where people can find out more about you, what you have to offer and connect with you on a more personal level. While owning your own website is great, unless you have the skill or money to continually update it, its not going to be a feasible option if you are new or on a budget.  Your best option is to start a self hosted WordPress blog using yourname.com as the domain.

If this sounds like an overwhelming, daunting concept because you think you lack the technical skills, don’t panic!   The internet has revolutionized the way we learn and there are now free courses that will take you click by click through the process. With software that captures the tutors computer screen, you can be stepped through exactly what to do on your computer screen!

If you need any help with finding free blogging resources, just give me a shout :)

I would love to hear your experience with replicated MLM websites.  If you’ve found any that you think are a cut above the rest, pop a generic link in the comments below and join the conversation!

Here’s to YOU INC success,

Michaelé

Technorati Tags: michaele harrington, MLM replicated websites, Network Marketing, network marketing relationships, you inc

One of the things I’ve always loved about Network Marketing, is that it leaves no stone unturned when it comes to personal growth.

In this post I’m going to share a real life story that started last year and continues to be one of the most inspiring learning curves I’ve encountered so far….

We all keep regular contact with our leaders, usually daily, if not several times per day.  If you are used to this kind of contact and it suddenly drops off, naturally you become concerned.  Well thats what happened to me last year when one of my top leaders, seemingly dropped off the face of the planet.

Little did I know at the time, that he had been arrested, extradited and put in prison.

Obviously my first reaction was shock.  I mean like the only experience I’d had with prison, was from one the few TV shows I ever watched, ‘Prison Break’.  So having only ever been exposed to prison life through TV, I started to panic about his safety.

This is one of my top leaders who I’ve known for years and I’ve suddenly gone from daily Skype calls to no way of contacting him or finding his whereabouts.  Little did I know at the time, that prisoners can be shifted almost on a daily level, (from jail to jail) to the point that their own legal team don’t even know where they are!

Grr where is that (1800-LocateAnInmate) number when you need it!

My next thoughts were sh**, a friend has been thrown into an interstate jail and I need to fly up there to show that someone cares.

So not knowing anything, I jumped on a plane to visit.  I want to add here, that as a female who has never entered a prison in her life ( and this is one of Australia’s most notorious prisons), my fear levels were starting to escalate.  You go though so many security hoops to the the point that you think sh**, if I had to get out of here in a hurry, I’m toast.  The flashing images from watching Prison Break didn’t help!   But then I started thinking if I’m scared, how must my friend on the ‘inside’ be feeling?

I have to say it felt like eternity sitting inside there waiting for the staff to ‘prepare’ my friend for his visitor.  They dress them in this really weird outfit that comes up to their neck so that you can’t slip any illegal contraband into their clothes.  Damn!  Um, I thought they just stripped me of everything but my clothes like 4 security gates ago lol.

If you’ve ever experienced this yourself, you’d know that it’s pretty awkward working out what to talk about with a guard standing within earshot.  So once the small talk ended, we started talking about (you guessed it) his Network Marketing business.  I’d never really thought about this before but suddenly I saw a new meaning for the word ‘passive income’.  No matter where you are (beach prison or otherwise), your income really does continue.  Although in this case, it was obviously going to require some ‘out of the box’ kind of help to keep it going.

So as the months went by after my visit, I started learning through his letters, about the hopelessness that some of the ‘soon to be released’ inmates felt regarding their future on the outside.  I guess ‘Just Released From Prison’ is not a desirable selling point to have on resumes these days!

As my friend has lived and breathed MLM for the last couple of decades, he naturally started to introduce some of the inmates to the concept.  Although some of these guys had previously been highly successful entrepreneurs, made significant amounts of money and were highly intelligent, they were still at a loss as to what they would do when they were released.

Enter Network Marketing….

The letters from my friend continued to talk about other inmates who were soon to be released and yet hungry for information on starting their own business, so I decided to post 3 books to him.  You’re First Year in Network Marketing, The New Professionals & How To Win Friends & Influence People.

Considering the circumstances, I figured the latter would be put to good use regardless lol.

From here the story continues as I begin to hear inspiring feedback from some of these men, who are now educating themselves on the possibility of a new life and an extraordinary future.

Stay tuned for my next post in this series, where I’ll share the feedback I’ve had after speaking directly with some of the entrepreneurial inmates on 3 way calls.

What about you, do you have any inspiring stories to share about how this industry is having a major impact on peoples lives?

People do extraordinary things in the most extenuating circumstances and I’d love to hear of any stories you have relating to Network Marketing.

Michaelé

Technorati Tags: mlm, Network Marketing

Have you noticed there’s a ‘tribal’ buzz happening out there on the Social Networking sites lately?

If you haven’t, I’m going to sum up the benefits in one short sentence…

Put simply, having your own Social Media Tribe = A massive amount of free traffic and eyeballs on your content.

Unless you’ve been online for a while or are an SEO expert, you would have noticed it’s not easy to get your content out there.  You know the feeling… You’ve created your masterpiece, installed the latest cool Social Media plugin to make it easy for people to syndicate and a week later your little tweetmeme button painfully sits at the grand total of 1.  Thanks Mum!  Your blog is like ghost town and the few visitors you’re getting are probably being scared away by the lack of ‘social proof’.

Last year after dedicating every spare moment into squeezing in just about every course I could on Social Media Marketing, there was still something critical missing….  If you listened really closely, you could just about hear the tumbleweeds rolling down my blog.  Not good!

ENTER: SOCIAL MEDIA TRIBES AND BLOGGING ALLIANCE TO THE RESCUE!

Ok so at the end of last year, I hooked up with 5 Ghost Busters (aka Social Media leaders), who banished those tumbleweeds, scared off the ghosts and replaced them with a raving bunch of cheerleaders.

Having your own Social Media Tribe is like a mini mastermind group of like minded people who all syndicate each others content.  So instead of promoting your own stuff (which you want to keep to a minimum anyway), your Tribe does all the syndicating!

Here is how it works…

First you want to find 4 or 5 other people who are at a similar stage to you in implimenting Social Media.

You then set up a ‘Tribe Power Hour’ on skype once a week.

From there, you go through all of each others social networking profiles and start a frenzy of activity.  You add comments to their latest blog posts, share them on Facebook, Retweet them, rate videos on Youtube and tag each other having loads of fun.  I can tell you from experience that when a bunch of people are out there stirring up fun, people come from everywhere wanting to join in :)

So once you’ve teamed up with a mini mastermind group who each have a few thousand followers on Twitter and a few hundred friends/fans on Facebook, your content is suddenly being sent out to tens of thousands of people.  Did I mention this is all in the space of an hour?  Now thats leverage!  Guess what happens after this?  EVERYTHING suddenly comes alive and your traffic goes through the roof!  It’s like the Law of Reciprocity on steroids!

Of course you still need to be producing content and actively engaging in conversation but no matter what industry you’re in, this is a hugely powerful strategy.

I only learned about the concept 8 weeks ago when I partnered up with 5 guys who had created (in my mind) the ‘perfect’ Social Media Tribe.  Why perfect?  Because each one of them had a specialized area of knowledge on different aspects of the Social Networking sites.  There were some cutting edge strategies and funky plugins that I never even knew existed that really took things to the next level.

More about some of these ‘stand out from the crowd’ strategies in my next post.

How about you, do you have a Tribe of cheerleaders on the Social sites yet?  Have you thought about using a content syndication ‘power hour’ for maximum leverage?

If you have any questions or stories to share, I’d love to hear from you.

Michaelé

Technorati Tags: michaele harrington, mlm, Network Marketing, social media, social networking, tribe mastermind formula, tribe tuesday

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

Technorati Tags: michaele harrington, Network Marketing, social networking