Welcome to this month's edition of Marketing Magic. In last month's newsletter we discussed about specific tips utilizing social networking for MLM marketing.

This month we will continue our online marketing series and talk about Do's and Don'ts in Social Networking to market your MLM business.

Marketing Magic's Contents

• Do's in Social Networking
  
• Dont's in Social Networking

Social Networking sites are a great resource to expand your network marketing business. It doesn’t matter what type of Social Media you use for networking online. Today there are many sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace and many more networks to choose and establish your online network marketing profile.

You may have many users/friends on your network, but active participation is required - it's what gets you noticed. It is a great idea to have Polls, encourage user opinions on certain subjects, commenting on other’s content as it would maintain constant interaction. In simpler words, creating an online profile on many social networking sites is not enough. As a business owner, you would have to constantly converse with other social networkers to better understand their needs.

Do's and Don'ts in Social Networking

Let me show you a few Do’s and Don’ts that would help you build a strong and successful online profile along with tips for health and productive interaction profitable to your network marketing business. Sounds good? Here goes:

Do’s

Be selective on choosing social networking sites.

There are thousands of social networking sites on the Inter net today. Joining multiple social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are a great way to expand your reach. Time management is very important though. To create and maintain an active profile could be a lot of work. Spend a few minutes on each site and decide if you want to join it before you spread yourself too thin.

Work on building a strong online profile.

It is advisable to use your real name to maintain a real yet professional profile on top social networking sites.
Keep updating your profile regularly and present your best self. Have a good description of yourself and the work you do for people to relate to you. A good photo of yours on the profile page adds the real and personal touch to the otherwise mundane profile.
Build a strong social network.
Ok, so now have online profiles on top sites. That’s great but it is not enough. The questions you need to ask yourself are:

- Have you checked your list of contacts to ensure they are the ones you want to interact with?
- How is your interaction on social networks on a scale 1-10, with 10 being good interaction?

If the answers to the above questions are not good then you have a weak social network. Interact with your contacts so that you are on your way to building a strong and reliable business network successfully.

Narrate your work.

We talked about interaction with contacts. But how would you go about it? You can talk both about social life and business. You can share your achievements, projects, etc. This will interest people to know you as a friend rather than a pushy business owner.

Join Forums and Communities.

A great way to participate and interact with other members on social networking sites is to join forums and communities. While your message may get lost in the traffic of content on established social sites, the chances of it reaching the intended audience in a smaller community is extremely HIGH.

It is good to be familiar with the culture of the social networking communities. The reason I say this is because unknowingly you might commit a social faux pas and you could be banished from the community.

Don’ts

Do NOT resort to spamming

I guess you know that spamming is looked down upon. Your social networking campaign will never succeed if you engage in spamming. Doing so will hamper your credibility on the online front. Social spamming includes offering unsolicited links, posting promotional comments, referring to articles that will lead to your site, etc. Stay away from these practices.

Don’t try to speed your social marketing campaign.

Assuming, you now have active profiles on all top social networking sites. The next step would be actively engaging conversations on these sites. But do not carry the “active” to updating or commenting to every hour or so. The updates must be natural and useful and not for the sake of updating.

Don’t get caught up in networking only with established profiles.

The entire concept of social networking is to interact with millions of users globally as it would help your network marketing business grow and succeed well. But just by connecting to users with established profiles will not help your campaign. It is important to reach out to everyone who is willing to know more about you and your business as they could result in being an integral part of your business expansion.

Don’t neglect your online profiles. Keep updating your profile details regularly.

Don’t include controversial content on your profile. Keep your political and religious views away from your online “self”.

Don’t use social networking sites as an advertising device. Before you learn the hard way, it is good to know that audiences don’t want marketing messages crowding their social networking sites.

A good social network marketer will aim to have a real account with friends, acquaintances and family. If you build a good rapport with your network of people, your links will have a great chance of being noticed, and your products will convert. But, remember that an online personality is only a fraction of marketing your business. It is the interaction on these social media platforms that will make your network marketing business reach great levels of success.

You may have realized that building a network for social networking sites takes a lot of time and hard work. Though this is not surprising, you can avoid these pitfalls - have a plan and stick to it! Ultimately, persistence is the key to success.

Until next month....Happy Networking

Troy Rocavert

Email us

www.network-marketing-business-school.com