With network marketing there are many way to build your business. One core strategy is through relationship marketing. Other activities are going to meetings, writing articles for local newspapers and magazines, prospecting in business groups, etc.
When you go online everything changes. You’re no longer restricted by your location; the world is your market. This allows you to build your business faster than you ever dreamed possible, especially when you learn how to use social media.
Many people think that building a social media presence is about putting content into different channels and then waiting for engagement to happen. That’s one approach but it’s not the most effective. In this article you will learn about different ways you can engage your audience and create (potentially) spectacular results online.
These methods are:
List Building
Autoresponder
Blogging
Write a Print book, eBook, or Kindle book
Write for Print Magazines and Ezines
Create and Market Information Products
Affiliate Marketing
Guest Blogging
Help People on LinkedIn and Facebook
Webinars
Create Courses for Udemy
Become an Authority by Interviewing Experts
Build Your business with SMS Text Messaging
Joint Ventures
List Building
The number one activity you should be involved in is list building. List building allows you to keep in touch with prospects and clients and gives you the ability to sell to the same people, over and over again for years to come.
One major mistake made by many marketers is where they only focus on getting the sale, then go after new clients. If you do this you are leaving more than 90% of the potential income you can make over the lifetime of that client on the table, according to Maria Veloso, author of “Web copy That Sells.”
Why You Need an Autoresponder
In conjunction with list building, having an autoresponder is at the heart of your Internet Marketing efforts. Building a list of customers and using an autoresponder to send them messages about sales and other promotions is an easy way to build your business.
Examples of third-party autoresponders include AWeber, iContact, MailChimp, and Constant Contact.
Build a Blog
This is where you write relevant posts and place those on your blog. A great platform to work with is WordPress. The software is open source and free. You have the ability to use many different blog templates, both free and commercial.
I recommend commercial themes, partly because you can contact support in case anything goes wrong. That’s unlikely to be available with free themes. Some examples of commercial theme providers are OptimizePress, LeadPages, Theme Forest, and StudioPress.
Here’s an example of the theme options offered by StudioPress.
Contrary to what you might think, the primary purpose of your blog is to capture leads and not to post content. As mentioned above, list building is the heart of your business and it needs to be kept at the forefront regardless which social media strategies you use.
Here’s my writing site, which uses an earlier version of the OptimizePress theme. Note the call to action signup box on the right hand side. Your site should have something similar, as well.
In addition to list building, you’ll want to share your posts with a variety of social media platforms, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Twitter. You can do so automatically within WordPress or you can make use of a 3rd party application, like Hootsuite, to do the sharing for you.
Write a Print Book, eBook, or Kindle Book
One of the fastest ways to build authority for your brand is by writing a book. A book gives you instant credibility in the business world. A book can be used in many ways, including: print, a PDF (Portable Document Format), or as a Kindle book.
You can use the book to make money but a better approach is to build the book, insert multiple calls to action and give the book away for free.
This allows you to use your book as a lead generator to help you build your list.
Here is an example of a free book written as a PDF (Portable Document Format), by Gerry Robert.
Inside the book are multiple calls to action. Here is an example of one of them.
Writing for Print Magazines and ezines
Like the options above, writing for magazines helps to expand your influence and credibility in the business world. You can make money with your articles and, depending on the magazine, you might get an author’s resource box, giving you the ability to add a call to action to join your list with every article. If the magazine is available in print, you can use examples of your articles with your promotion. Another opportunity is placing content into free Ezines.
An example is Ezine Articles.
Guest Blogging
One of the many things a business wants is to be positioned as an industry leader or authority. One effective way of doing so is guest blogging. This is where you find blogs which match your corporate vision and post relevant articles on those sites.
Guest blogging allows you to build your brand by making use of the Author’s resource box to add a call to action to your website or list. It is similar to submitting content to free ezines, but better because the sites you post your content to are highly focused and will be a better match for your market.
Boost Blog Traffic is one site that accepts guest posts. Note the call to action to join their list right at the top of the page.
Create and Market Information Products
In addition to the other methods in this article, creating and marketing information products (books, eBooks, videos, audios, courses), is a great way to expand your reach beyond what you do in your MLM business.
You attract people to your offer with advertising or blog posts, you sign them up for your list using an opt-in form or squeeze page and give them something of value (a report, video coupon, etc.) in exchange for their email address. Once you do, you have a prospect.
From there you educate them about your product or service by email and use webinars, videos and more, all with the goal of turning them into a customer.
When you sell your products you’ll need a payment processor. Your options are a shopping cart, PayPal or ClickBank. Of these, ClickBank is a great option because it allows you to set up multiple affiliate relationships. After a two-week period, ClickBank will pay affiliates automatically, which saves you a lot of time.
Affiliate Marketing
If you’re not the type to create courses, you can market affiliate products to your audience using ClickBank, Rakuten Affiliate Network, and CJ Affiliate. Each one of these companies has a wide range of products to choose from. There’s no shortage of ideas and you can easily find something to match your audience.
Commissions vary, though are generally less than joint ventures (discussed later on in this article). A great site which gives you an overview of affiliate programs (and what might be right for you) is Associate Programs.
Webinars
In conjunction with list building, webinars are a great way to increase your influence, educate prospects and make sales of your MLM products and other products, such as information marketing products or affiliate products.
Create Online Courses for Udemy
Creating courses for Udemy allows you to create a passive income stream, become known outside your normal circle of contacts and expand your influence.
Become an Authority by Interviewing Experts
This is a great technique for building influence and to be seen as an expert in your industry. You find influential experts, interview them and publish the interviews on your site as both audio and a transcript. You also ask the influencer to promote the interview on your site to their social media contacts.
This is a great way to build your authority. You can also package interviews for sale and create joint ventures with the people you’ve interviewed. This can create a nice sideline of income.
Mixergy is one business that’s based entirely on interviews. Andrew Warner (the founder) has conducted over 1,000 interviews so far.
Helping People on LinkedIn and Facebook
This is where you join groups on LinkedIn and Facebook and help people solve their problems, for free. One of my colleagues used this method to raise $150,000 for his business and he didn’t have to spend a penny on advertising.
When you join a group you can track the discussions and start testing a wide variety of marketing ideas to see which ones generate interest. In combination with posting articles from a blog and an opt-in page this is a great way to build a list as you create engagement.
Build Your Business with SMS Messaging
SMS messaging (Short Message Service) could be a huge boon to your business, especially if you need to send out time-sensitive messages. With over 320 million wireless subscribers in the United States this allows you to tap into a huge market.
Unlike email messages (which could be read up to 48 hours after the fact), SMS messages are usually read within minutes and partly because many people carry their phones with them. This makes it the perfect vehicle for a business such as a restaurant.
Joint Ventures
The classic definition of a joint venture is where you have a product or service you market to a third party. One of the best ways to do this is if the third party has a list and you can market your product that way. The commission split is usually 50/50, though you might want to give more if you want to focus on list building.
Typically joint ventures go one way. i.e. One party has a product and the JV partner has a list. An option is where both parties have lists and cross-promote their products and/or services.
The number one reason for creating a joint venture partnership is to create a long-term relationship with people who are a center of influence. Working this way will allow you to build your business, quickly.
Moving Forward
All of these topics will be covered in upcoming issues of The Network Marketing Magazine.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are many ways you can build your network marketing business, outside of the tools the company gives you.
Still, regardless of technique(s) you choose, your main focus should be on list building. This is the most important aspect of your business. Keeping that in mind will allow you to build a profitable business which will nourish you for years to come.
For 17 years, Nathan s main clients have been in the graphics software and photography industries.
Nathan has written copy for over 30 magazines and corporations, including: CE Tips (Consumer Electronics), Computer Graphics World, Database Journal, Mac Design, Photoshop User, Rangefinder, Smart Computing, The Computer Paper, Streaming Media World, HTML Goodies, Windows Expert, CIO, Future Shop Online, Visual Convergence, PIX, Publish, Mactoday. The Corel Corporation, Common Ground, Monday, Computer Courseware International (CCI) and WebReference.com.
Nathan served as an Associate Editor at WebReference.com for 5 years, managing and editing the work of a team of technical software writers and programmers from all over the world.
Nathan is the author of seven books, all on the subjects of computer graphics and photography. The titles are: Fundamentals of 3D Graphics, The Photoshop Companion, How to Speed up Your Computer: In 30 Minutes or Less, Professional Photographic MS Word Templates, The Corel PHOTO-PAINT X3/X4 Insider, How To Position Yourself As An Expert In Any Industry and Secrets of Profitable Freelance Writing.
Nathan createshow-to tutorials, video tutorials, software manuals, webinars, live classroom seminars, seminars, reports and press releases. He is also a skilled interviewer and has interviewed over 100 business executives.
