Building a downline without content is like rowing a
rowboat without oars. It can be done. But boy, is it slow.
But when you have lots of interesting and relevant content
your oars become bigger and bigger. And so does your
downline.
These days people are not so anxious to join an
opportunity. They want to be romanced first. They want the
opportunity to check you out.
Most prospects are looking for leadership. Training.
Someone who can, and will, help them. And truth be known,
they also expect to be entertained at the same time. If you
can't entertain them, you lose.
Good quality content will help you with lead generation,
branding yourself as someone in the know, following up and
relationship building.
These things are all essential to building a network
marketing organization. And this article will cover three
ways you can use content to do all the above.
1. Lead Generation by Writing and Submitting Articles
Writing and submitting articles is an excellent way to
brand yourself as knowledgeable in your field. Done
correctly, article marketing can also help with search
engine rankings and be used to get people to take action.
Opting into your newsletter for example.
I run two article directories. One that is very general
with categories covering just about every topic you can
think of. And a new one just for articles for network
marketers.
Running these directories has given me a bird's eye view of
article marketing and I see some very common mistakes. Ones
I hope that you will avoid.
One of the most common things I see is people will submit a
poorly written article. The title will be keyword rich, for
the search engines, but actually lack the ability to grab
anyone's attention. Usually added at the bottom is a
resource box with a link to a website of course, but
without any call to action.
The reason they do this is to get incoming links to their
websites, trying to raise their ranking in the search
engines. That might be OK for Adsense sites, but not if you
want to be a big dog network marketer.
With that strategy, nobody is reading your articles. Nobody
is downloading your articles to publish on other websites
and in newsletters. Your not getting leads because you have
no Call to Action. So you're not getting the subscribers to
follow up with. The short of it is, nobody knows who the
heck you are.
What your goal needs to be with article marketing is
getting readers. Not just links. You want to look past the
article directories with publishers in mind. You want
people to share your article with other people. That makes
it viral. That's a very cool thing about article marketing.
2. Blogging for Dollars Anyone?
Not long ago Blogging was the big thing. You just had to
have a blog. And how easy it was to get ranked well in the
search engines with a blog. And everyone was teaching you
how to do that.
And I suppose that did work. And it still does to some
extent. The problem is, like everything, everyone and his
brother is now blogging. So just getting search engine
traffic is still very possible but less likely than before.
So is blogging still a good idea?
Yes it is. A blog is a good business tool. One reason is
because your prospects are spying on you. Mine are spying
on me. They want to know who you are, are you for real, do
you know, do you care, are you honest, and probably what
color underwear you have on RIGHT NOW.
So if you want them to know what color Underoo's you have
on before they join your mlm opportunity than you have to
tell them. You have to feed them the information they are
looking for, so they will feel safe, and having a blog is a
good way to do that.
And here's another situation where having your own blog
might help you. Let's say you've been working this lead.
You follow up with them with a phone call or email. Now you
get them on your opportunity call. Well while they are on
that call they hear BIG SHOT GURU on the phone and decide
to Google the guru. Now they found the guru's link and
joins YOUR deal under Mr. Big Shot.
Doesn't that just tick you off? It sure does me! But by you
having a blog you stand a better chance to give people a
reason to join YOU instead of Mr (or MRS) Big Shot. You
know, show off your charming personality or something.
Having a blog about your mlm business will give you a
chance to show what YOU have to offer. I mean, what's so
special about you? I don't know what it is. But there is
something. I guarantee it. So be brave and strut your stuff.
The third advantage about blogging is credibility. I am a
direct response kind of guy usually. That means I would
normally use a one page website, capture their info, and
then show my goods, so to speak.
But I have noticed over the past year or so that when you
recommend a product or service on a blog the response rate
can be much higher. It's less pushy. Especially if you can
get people coming back to your blog. It's a relationship
builder. So when you are recommending something, even show
how you use it, a blog can be quite effective.
Plus as your blog becomes more and more popular (and this
usually takes time) you will start getting people to
comment. Your readers will comment and often leave a link.
Sometimes that's the only reason they do comment. But it's
still worth it. The extra content helps with search engines
and also gives a community atmosphere.
3. Good Old Fashioned Email Marketing.
When R.S.S. (Real Simple Syndication) started to become
popular there was a lot of noise about the death of email
marketing. Have you checked your email lately? Email
marketing still alive and well. No, it is not as effective
as it used to be. But what online still is?
The thing you need to understand about content is people
want to read it. They really do. And your content can be
interchanged. So you can use all or part of the same
content in an article, on a blog, and also in your email
marketing. It just has to be interesting to the people that
are reading it.
For network marketers you can use email marketing content
to ask people to join your opportunity. You can use it to
create a relationship. The best use of it is to show your
prospects what you bring to the table. In bite size pieces
you can show them why you would be the person they should
join. And that is what you want, correct?
So there you have it. Just three of the many ways you can
use and combine good quality content to build your downline.
----------------------------------------------------
Since 1998 Jeff Neil has been writing for numerous
websites, blogs and newsletters about network and
information marketing and now offers this free report: Why
9 out of 10 Network Marketers Only Think They Have a
Business when All They are Doing is Building Their Sponsors
Business and Making the Company Rich. Learn to be an MLM
big fish at http://nichemarketing.biz/
No comments:
Post a Comment