Network Marketing with a Blog or Website - Tip #1 Getting Started Right for Faster Results

If this is a fairly new subject for you I've created a quick overview in the first couple sections of this Hub below.

If you already have a blog or website started or you're about to start one (and understand what it's all about) skip on down to the BIG TIP that is THE reason I've been able to generate so many leads each day through my blogs (while creating them fast).

If you're in network marketing you've probably read one of the great books on Internet attraction marketing. Ann Sieg's Renegade Network Marketer and Mike Dillard's Magnetic Sponsoring (or Building on a Budget) are some of the big books on the topic.

In a nutshell they introduce network marketers to the concept of 'attracting your leads to you' rather than chasing prospects around as the old MLM model has taught.

Web 2.0--The Big Buzz

One of the big buzz words in Internet "attraction" marketing is Web 2.0--these are free or low cost strategies that allow you to generate a leads list by building an audience.

They are generally methods that anyone can use. In other words you don't have to be a programmer or brainiac to figure out how to put up content to attract an audience.

With all of these Web 2.0 options, the key is to provide value... content that your 'target market' is interested in. Of course, your 'target market' just means "people you want to attact to you"--A.K.A. your prospects or leads.

Your first step is to get traffic to your site. That's your audience. They become a prospect or lead when they have given a phone number after buying something you recommended or join a lead capture page you directed them to within your content.

One of the very best ways to build an audience through Web 2.0 is through a Blog. There is also the option of building a web site through a Web 2.0 (easy-to-use) application like that from SBI (Site Build It).

Below I'll a give a huge 'strategy' Tip about how to go about organizing your early stage Blog or site so it gets the fastest results possible.

When you're first putting together a Blog, such as one you've started from Squarespace, or a Website, like that you may be putting together from SBI (Site Build it), the biggest challenge is getting started.

How do you go about it to optimize results out of the gate?

I've created several blogs that all generate quite a bit of traffic each day for me.

The biggest challenge was always the first few days and weeks--when I was figuring out what in the heck the Blog would say, exactly.

You want to see results as quickly as possible, but you're not sure how to organize the blog or site.

You're not sure what content to put in there for the best results.

The Big Tip:

If you follow this strategy I believe it will have a huge impact on your results when getting started.

The main tip I wanted to give is the 3rd item below, but I felt I should include some other points to prepare you for item 3 (in case you haven't been exposed to any of our training before seeing this article).

Consider all of the following when getting started for fastest results:

1. Think about who you are writing to (who is your target audience)

2. Write down a bunch of different 'areas' or topics this audience might be interested in that you either know something about or that you're interested in learning

3. Create a Nav Bar (navigation bar) at your Blog or website that organizes the list of topics you've written down, even if you don't have the content yet. It's OK to have a Nav Bar with no content 'behind' it yet. I'll explain today why this can be a huge winning strategy if you follow this suggestion.

In this article I'll focus on each of these 3 items, which will assist you tremendously in creating a Blog or website out of the gate that optimizes results so you get an audience (and generate leads) significantly faster.

Knowing your target market is imperative.

You have to know who you're creating content for... before you can attract anyone to your content!

That's a funny statement, isn't it?!

It's like saying, "You have to know what you want to order at the restaurant before you can place your order."

And yet most people don't spend enough time thinking about who they want to attract.

You have to really get clear about the needs, dreams, fears, concerns, values and topics that your 'target audience' is wanting to read about or hear about.

And that's what you write about at your site or blog.

I've created an entire email series on this topic called, "The 7 Lessons to Attract Your Prospects to You." The first several lessons are all about how to figure out who you're wanting to attract and what you can provide to them to attract them to your blog, website, or anywhere else on the net.

You can access these 7 Lessons by becoming a free member of Renegade University to zoom in on the topic.

If you're a Professional member of Marketing Merge, you have access to this in your Professional back office (as of July 17th).

But Wait!

What is important to understand is that you don't have to necessary know EXACTLY who you're attracting to get started with your blog or website, as long as you're in the right ballpark.

So read the "7 Lessons" and follow the quick exercises it walks you through.

Then, just go for it!

You'll get more and more clear on what kind of content, exactly, you're supposed to create AFTER you're already generating traffic (as long as you follow this strategy to the 'letter').

See Items 2 and 3 below for more about how you can begin putting your blog or website together right away to optimize your results (to build your audience and generate leads much faster) while you're gaining more and more clarity about who you want to attract (exactly) and what content you'll create to attract them.

Basically, when you're first getting started you want to LEVERAGE your blog and/or website and use it as a "scratch pad" or a place to formulate your ideas WHILE you're pre-positioning yourself to generate traffic and leads.

You'll never know exactly what you're doing until you start doing it, even if that means you're starting with a mess!

So once you've spent a few hours thinking about item #1 above (refer to the 7 Lessons training series) you can begin.

You literally get out a pen or open up Microsoft Word and start brainstorming about what kinds of things you're target market may be interested in. I've spent an extensive amount of time outlining how to know 'who' and 'what' in the 7 Lessons so I won't go through 10 pages of explaining that again here. The point is you make a list--a messy list.

Write down any kind of topic, interest, subject, controversy, book review, person review, opinion, tip, etc.--anything that could be discussed on your blog or site that may interest your target market.

When you're putting together this list, you should also be using a key word tool to see what kinds of things your target market is searching for on the Internet. I suggest http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com

If you're a professional member with Marketing Merge you'll get plenty of training on this in Phase II of the marketing tutorials. If not, hopefully you know about some of this stuff--or, you can join us in Marketing Merge and we'll teach it all to you step by step.

OK, so once you have created a long list of possible things to write about -- 'how to's' and reviews or opinions on topics that might interest your target market, your next step is to break all this up into categories.

You won't do it perfectly so don't even try. Just do it.

You want to get your content up and out there as fast as you can. You want the search engines to start indexing you. You want to start linking your content together so your blog has credibility to the search engines.

Even if you don't know what all that means exactly, just follow this strategy I'm laying out here for you... because you'll be light years ahead of where you're at now... and light years ahead of all the folks who study, study, perfect, perfect and never get anywhere in REALITY.

Oh... and if you've spent countless hours already putting together your blog or website, but you don't have at least 10 different pages, consisting of at least 50 articles, you're doing it wrong. You're being a perfectionist too early in the game before you understand what to perfect.

Put up the content... a lot of content... in the way I am describing it and Go, Go, Go!

I'll give you a tangible example of what your list of categories might look like in item 3 below... which is where I explain the last step in this cool process.

Special note:

It's always best to create content on topics you know something about (like on a book you've read or a coach you've learned from... or a company you know something about, etc)... OR... create content on topics you would want to learn about so that, while you're researching them, you're personally getting something out of it.

Breaking your random messy list of possible 'content ideas' into categories is not necessarily easy. It will take a couple hours in total most likely. But that's a small investment for the reward of building a large ongoing-growing audience and continuous residual leads generation for your business!

I'll give you a real example of how this list of categories might look when you stick it on your Nav Bar at your blog or site.

I'm putting together a blog right now that's a mess (just like yours should be when you put it together). This blog is not brand new, but it was a mess--a real mess. It was the first blog I created and I had only a vague idea at the time who my target market might be. I was still able to generate substantial traffic through it with strategies I now teach--even though it was far from perfect.

In fact, trying to make your blog or website "perfect" before it generates traffic is the #1 mistake people make.

Ultimately, that's the bigger point I hope you get today.

It's amazing how well you can do if you take a lot of action with your blog while you're still figuring things out. This goes for all the Web 2.0 strategies.

It took me a lot of hours to get my first blog producing, but once it started it's never stopped producing traffic and leads for me daily.

That's because the hours I spent were NOT on making it perfect but instead to create a lot of content (even if it was messy); and to promote it through the common methods, which I teach in detail at Marketing Merge.

Anyway, I have now gone back to 're-create' this blog and to target my message and audience much more than I have.

So it's REALLY a mess again right now. And that's OK (my point, in fact).

Click to see this blog targeted to network marketers

This blog has a Google ranking of 3 (that's pretty good) and is getting hundreds of unique visits each day, several leads each day... it's made me over 10K since its inception in trackable income, and yet I sitll consider it a rough draft!

That's my point. Don't be a perfectionist! It will kill a beginner if you do that.

I just totally messed this blog up (so-to-speak)... by putting up things on the Nav Bar that don't even link to anything yet. The picture of me there is NOT the best 'marketing' pic--but I don't care because I'm moving forward on the content big time... that's my focus. Getting it ranking and getting traffic flowing through it.

I do that by throwing up content and improving it on the fly.

This is how I create blogs from scratch... fast and with results coming fast.

It's the approach I suggest you take.

Look at the Nav Bar again on the right side.

I created that Nav Bar--like an outline. Then, over time, I fill in the content later (as fast as I'm able). Now I'm actually hiring writers for very little cost to write the content for me. I just manage it. You can do the same--we show you how at Marketing Merge.

I used to waste so much more money and get a lot less results buying leads or doing advertising for my business. This is far more effective.

I'm writing this article on July 12th, 2008, so if you visit the blog example anytime close to that date you'll see the mess I'm referring to.

If you are referencing this article after I have organized it, just imagine that many of the links on the right side are empty!

At this time, even as that blog generates a lot of traffic for me, there are many links on the Nav bar that go nowhere. They are nothing more than my outline!

Am I worried about what people who visit my blog will think if they click on a bunch of links that go nowhere?

Nope.

I just want to build that traffic up and I'm not concerned with any of that yet.

Now... you could choose to not display that Nav Bar to the world while you're putting your blog or website together--and that's fine. But here's why I display my unfinished business to the world...

It kicks me in the tail to get it done.

I've learned something about myself and I've seen it in everyone I've ever coached in business.

If you 'put yourself out there' you'll 'step up' a lot faster and better than if you are always hanging out back stage 'getting ready.' So I always look for ways to put myself out there in front. For example, this blog I'm referring to... it has links that go nowhere. I'm OK with people seeing that because I know I am more apt to just put anything in there to 'fill' it in as quickly as I can, rather than leave it very long like it is.

In other words, I won't leave those links blank very long. And now each time I visit my blog to work on it, I know EXACTLY what to do. Put content in as fast as I can, filling in the 'Nav Bar' areas.

As I put up new content I book mark it, I link to it real quick from other locations, using anchor text, etc... I am doing it! I'm getting listed more and more and in a hurry.

I'm not being a perfectionist in the sense of making perfect content that takes forever. I'm doing what brings results--I love this strategy. It works.

You see, the bigger point here is that you gotta' get content in there. Yes, it's gotta' be in the right ballpark as far as being created for your target market and it has to be applying basic marketing rules for getting indexed with key word searches people are actually searching for... but if you are following a good training program like Marketing Merge, for example, you know all this stuff (or soon will).

So your biggest job is to follow through on what you learn and just start getting stuff up there--without being Mr. or Mrs. Perfectionist...which will kill your business in the early phase.

I suggest you do the same in the early stages of building your blog or site... but that's your call.

If you prefer you can organize your Nav Bar in much the same way but without setting it up so the public sees it before you've put content in there.

But I recommend you do what I do -- I believe you'll be much more motivated to create more content... and you'll be less of a perfectionist in the early stages.

I want you to create a similar mess at your blog or website, or at least duplicate the process in your own way. Improve it later after the search engines knows it exists.

Take a look again at the Nav Bar on the right side of the blog. That's a list of categories that allows me to organize my content for my target market, which is network marketers.

Your target market might be people interested in buying poodle jackets, but the process I'm teaching you here is the same.

Create a messy category list like I've done at this blog on the Nav Bar.

Then, one by one, section by section, start filling it in.

If you need help learning a lot of the things we covered here today, plus a whole lot more, follow our step by step video tutorials at Marketing Merge.

In the next Hub on this topic I'll share how to use Twitter, a cool application you may have heard of, to build a lot bigger audience with your Blog (as well as with Facebook, Squidoo, and other locations). Twitter allows you to leverage your time and build audiences through multiple ways at the same time.

If you're a Marketing Merge Professional see the Twitter tutorials in the Facebook section in your training area. We'll add another Twitter tutorial soon on using it specifically with your blog, but you can prepare by watching the first Twitter tutorial there now.

Another upcoming topic for a Hub coming up is to discuss the "Blogs vs. Websites" debate--which is better?

SBI, a company that provides a popular website building platform (which I sometimes recommend), sent out an email a while back about how Blogging is inferior to a website. I disagree and will discuss the strengths and differences of each strategy... so you're clear on why you might choose a blog over a website, or visa-versa.

- First, of course, get clear on your target market. Know their needs, concerns, interests, etc. Refer to the "7 Lessons to Attract Prospects to You" email series, free from Renegade University. Also found by website links in the Marketing Merge Professional back office (after July 17th)

- Create a list of possible content topics your target market may be interested in.

- Before you create all that content, create a list ot categories that all that content could fit under. Create these on your Nav Bar asap--first thing--at your blog or site. Now, fill it in fast and furious. Build up the content even if it's not so good. Get indexed on the search engines. Improve over time after the shell is made. Focus on the creating the 'essence' of your blog or site before you EVER become a perfectionist. For step-by-step training, find Marketing Merge.