Starting a direct sales business is easy. Staying in it is the hard part. When it comes to the success of your direct sales, network marketing business, getting new leads is the lifeblood of your business.

The ease of leveraging the power of the internet has never been easier or more abundant. Here are easy tips to finding leads and making money in your direct sales business by leveraging the internet.

Start with a blog. If you don’t have one, I highly recommend setting one up. You can download my FREE ebook to get started with blogging. Enter your email on the right sidebar and you’ll get instant access.

Once you start posting articles on your blog, syndicate your article automatically to LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. These are the three big social media platforms.

You can also sign up for Digg and other social bookmarking sites and submit your articles there too. The goal is to drive traffic back to your blog and build SEO for your blog.

Your goal with social media is to build your business and not make friends (unless that’s your goal). You will get different responses and results depending on what your objectives are with social media.

Post the same article to social media directories such as LinkedIn Groups.  Syndicate to as many places as possible because there are multiple platforms to connect with potential customers.

Use a conversation as a starter. Example: if you’re writing an article on how to be more productive with your direct sales business in the summertime, start a conversation with something like “how do you stay productive during the summer months?” and then attach your article to the conversation.

LinkedIn Groups is a great place to look for potential prospects and start connecting with people that are already in your business. You can do the same with Twitter search and Facebook fans and groups.

With LinkedIn Groups, if you belong to direct sales and network marketing groups, you’re already positioned to connect with thousands of other like-minded business builders in your industry.

There are potential prospects and customers to connect with everywhere online. Start by commenting on their comments or private reply and ask if they would like to connect. Do not allude to your business, mention your business, or attempt to recruit or sell in any way. The goal is to connect and make new business contacts.

The more you talk about your products or business opportunity, the less likely people will connect with you. Remember that most people in these niche groups are already in direct sales but there’s always a percentage of people who are not or looking to join another company.

More importantly, no one likes to receive a “friend” request that alludes to joining their business opportunity.

The key is to be patient. Give yourself time to write valuable articles for your blog and syndicate through social media platforms, and give other people opportunities to connect with you. Continue to share your knowledge and actively participate in these groups and you’ll see people responding to you.

The best way to get people to connect with you is to start by connecting with them first. A retweet of their article on Twitter is a great way to make a connection. Or a reply to someone else’s comment on a LinkedIn discussion.

There are potential prospects everywhere online and it is up to you to reach out to them. Don’t wait for someone to connect with you, start a converstaion first, and don’t take it personally if they don’t connect with you.

There are so many ways to use online to connect and find prospects. How do you use social media to find prospects in your direct sales business? Share your tips or leave a question.

’til next time,

Janette

p.s. As always, kindly share if you find this helpful .

As I write this post, I’m traveling with my family and taking full advantage of Google Docs and technology’s conveniences to write for my blog, participate on social media, catch up on other blogs, and staying connected to my business.  Here are some of my tips for marketing your direct sales business this summer and staying connected.

One of my favorite tools is Google Docs which I started using because of the ease of accessing it from anywhere. No matter where we’re going, I’m able to write articles for Marketing Direct Sales blog using Google Docs which is similar to a Word doc except I’m not tied to my computer and can access it remotely.

With smartphones, free wifi at coffee places and most hotels, there are no excuses for not working your direct sales business over the summer, right? Some might disagree with me and feel vacationing is a time to unwind and “unplug”. I find it hard to unplug completely for several reasons:

#1 I actually love what I’m doing and for me it doesn’t feel like work.

#2 I don’t need to be plugged in for hours while vacationing but feel it’s professional to at least check in once or twice throughout the day.

#3 It doesn’t take any quality time away from the family or fun because there’s always some “free” time.

While my kids are resting there’s always an extra hour here and there. That’s when I check my emails, send a tweet or two, comment on LinkedIn groups, etc. In fact, the idea for this post came from watching them swim. I was catching up on my favorite blogs on my phone J .

The flexibility of being an internet marketer is that I really can work anywhere and anytime. It’s a matter of pre-planning.

Example: Before leaving the house, I make sure to have my Flip, in case I’m inspired to do a short 1 minute video. Bring along a camera and take photos that you can use for your blog post. How about a business book if you don’t have internet access on your cell phone?

As much as people think social media takes up an enormous amount of time, it really doesn’t have to, especially if you’re disciplined and stick to a schedule. Otherwise, you can easily find yourself responding to every update on Facebook or tweet. It’s not necessary to respond to everything or everyone.

Example: I try to retweet several posts that are useful. The same goes for Facebook and LinkedIn. My strategy: social media is limited to no more than an hour a day.

For me, taking advantage of technology’s conveniences allow me to travel during this summer with my family or while hanging out at the beach near my house with my kids.

From a business standpoint, I feel it’s important for me to have “office hours” even though I might be at the pool or the beach. By staying plugged-in, I’m consistently working my business and staying in touch with team members as well as potential customers.

If you’re home full-time with your kids this summer, how are you using the summer months to stay connected? Share your thoughts or tips on how you’re working your direct sales business during this summer.

‘til next time,

Janette

p.s. If you find this article helpful, kindly share by retweeting, digging and so forth … thanks so much guys! J

It seems like every blog post you read is about branding you; setting up a blog; start a social media campaign; start tweeting and so forth. To say information overload is an understatement, even for seasoned internet marketers. The biggest challenge is where to invest the bulk of your time without being sucked into a vacuum. And how to get the most from social media marketing for your direct sales business opportunity.

This blog post was inspired by Lynn Terry’s Take-Aways from Ustream Disaster  which chronicled her recent experiment with Ustream inspired by Gary Vaynerchuk’s Crush It!

Another interesting post is from Dan Schwabel for Hubspot’s Inbound Marketing: Stop Wasting Time with Social Media. Dan is recognized as “personal branding guru” by The New York Times. Dan writes, “I used to spend two hours a day on Twitter, yet it didn’t result in enough opportunities to prove its marketing value.”

Choosing an online medium
There are so many online mediums to choose from and some might not be the best medium to reach and convert your target market. Setting up a Twitter account is easy and getting thousands of followers fast is easy too with a paid service (which I don’t recommend!). But making real connections with people on Twitter is not always easy to do.

Even though Facebook has over 400 million users, it seems Facebook offers an incredible opportunity to tap into this vast network of “friends” and thousands of Like/Fan pages that you can join and participate in but is it really translating into real business?

Personally, I rarely pay attention to the “become a fan” notices and invites and miss 99% of the daily feeds. Not that it’s unimportant to me but it’s not the main medium for my business.

Which brings up Twitter. Although Marketing Direct Sales gets a good amount of traffic from Twitter and I’ve met new friends and added team members to my business, the percentage is tiny but the friendship is valuable.  As Paul Gillin says in Secrets of Social Media only about 1% of your online contacts will engage or add any real value to your business.

And as Dan says in the above blog post, most Facebook and Twitter users are already following too many people to take notice. More reasons for you to solidify the relationships that you’ve already built through these mediums and enhance those relationships on a personal level. These are your true followers, friends and fans that add value to your bottom line.

Setting up benchmarks
This is not to say you shouldn’t add social media to your online marketing mix but you need to set up benchmarks to track the return on your investment. The end goal is more than just socializing on social media for the plain fun of it (unless that’s your goal).

If blogging is your medium, treat it like a business which means you should set up marketing strategies and track your progress. If it’s Twitter, set up a strategic marketing plan.

Whatever marketing strategies you’re using as a medium to build your direct sales opportunity, set up benchmarks and re-evaluate on a regular basis. I don’t get hung up on Google Analytics, number of followers or friends, but rather the quality of the interactions.

At the end of the week, if you’re hitting the number of leads captured through your marketing efforts or sold x-number of products and opportunities shared-  whatever the benchmarks you’ve set, expand on those marketing efforts and drop the ones that aren’t working for you.

Business shouldn’t be a zero-sum game as in sports where someone or a team has to lose (yeah, sad about the Lakers’ lost last night!). Instead, reach out to your fellow direct sales consultants that need help. Return the kindness from someone else’s help and weed out the ones that approach business as a zero-sum game.

In business, you benefit by adding more value to someone else’s lives. You help others and they in turn help you. Everybody wins.

How are you using social media for marketing your direct sales business opportunity?

‘til next time,

Janette

p.s. If you would like my new FREE guide: How to Turn Your Passion into a Blog and Profit, leave your email below. It’ll be available soon . Kindly share this post with your network of pals … much thanks!!

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