Social media has changed our lives and brought both opportunities and risks for building a business, especially for network marketing professionals. If you use social media correctly and you can grow a global MLM business from your living room. But if you use it the wrong way and you’ll end up spamming everyone you know and become “that guy” (or girl) and most likely give up and blame the industry for your lack of success.
So, what do we mean but using it right or wrong? Let’s start with how NOT to use social media, as this is one of the biggest issues the industry has at the moment.
Using social media in the wrong way gives the whole industry a bad reputation. This is often due to people starting their businesses and posting everything all over their friends’ Facebook feeds and inviting everyone they know to take a look at the “amazing opportunity” they have without ever considering who they are talking to and how it might be good for them. This happens due to lack of understanding how to use social media – and maybe because bad behaviours are being taught from uplines. Marry that with the confidence of hiding behind a computer screen, and you get disaster!
Let’s take this offline and see how different it would be…
You’ve just started a new business and you’re super excited about it. Would you go knocking on the doors of ALL (and I mean ALL) of your friends, family and associates” doors to invite them to look at it? No, you wouldn’t. How about an evening out down the pub, you recognise a few faces in there, but you don’t know them really, would you go straight over and invite them to take a look at the business opportunity?
No, once again, this is not what you would do. Why? Because it wouldn’t work!
Let’s take a look at an effective approach to both of these situations…
You’re excited about your new business and the opportunity that comes with it so you tell your close friends and talk about how great it could be for you. With your close friends or family, your excitement for the opportunity alone might be enough to get them to ask to take a look at it. For other friends and family who you don’t see as often and aren’t ask close to, you might wait until you see them at the next family event and they ask how things are before they even find out about your new business and even then, you wouldn’t jump straight in and ask them to take a look, you’d talk about what it’s done for you and your family and ask them questions about themselves which could allow the conversation to naturally lead to you asking them to take a look at the opportunity. However, about with your “friends” down the pub? How could that work?
Well, firstly, now that you’re a network marketing professional, you’re on the lookout for people to get to know and build relationships with so next time you’re down the pub you start to put a name to the faces you know and you say hello, and over time, to start to build a real relationship with this person. Then, when the time is right (either they ask you about your business or they show a sign that it could be good for them – i.e. say things are a bit tight and they could do with earning some extra cash), you simply invite them to take a look. No pressure, no formalities.
So, how does this apply to online and, in particular, social media? Well, it’s all about investing in a person and building a relationship first so don’t jump straight in with the business opportunity. In fact, hold off sharing it and let them ask you to take a look. Start by asking them questions about themselves and getting to know them; choose to engage with people of a similar mindset to you and other successful MLM leaders then comment or message them and tell them what you like about their profile and why you want to get to know them (lead the business out of it). Then, when the time is right the business will naturally come up; either from them asking or through something they say which leads to you saying you might have something that could help them.
If you follow the above tip for prospecting on social media, you’ll soon see huge success! But remember, just because you’ve taken the right approach, it doesn’t mean you’ll only get Yes’s. Network marketing is a numbers game and you will always get a lot more No’s than Yes’s but don’t let that stop you from investing in the relationships and taking the right approach to building a long-term MLM business.
We hope you’ve enjoyed reading this article and are ready to start using social media the right way. Let us know how you get on ?
