Are you attracting leads to your business? Or are you still spending time and money chasing opportunity leads to grow your network marketing business? The new generation of renegade network marketers is challenging the traditional methods for growing a network marketing business. It's not a matter of one way being right or wrong, it really is just a matter of using the "advantages" that are available by marketing on the internet and maximizing the power of new Web 2.0 technologies to grow your business faster than ever before. The World Wide Web is undergoing a change in the way that people interact and network with the growth of social network sites. There are thousands of social networks springing up all over the Web (in fact there are over 2000 already!), and this represents a huge opportunity for smart business owners to generate leads for their business and they're FREE! Sites such as Facebook and Myspace are well known, and used, by the Generation Y's to socialize and share information, images and music, etc. But network marketers are now maximizing these sites, and many others, to generate leads for their businesses and explode their downline recruiting. But that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to using internet marketing and social networking in particular to grow your network marketing business. What's social networking? Basically any site that allows the users to generate content by interacting, sharing information and connecting with other users is a social network site. This new generation of websites is called Web 2.0 sites or technologies and their growth is phenomenal. How can you use social networking sites to generate leads? There are so many ways to generate leads for free utilizing Web 2.0 sites that it can be quite daunting when you first start. To describe each method fully, I would need to write a complete book, but I would like to give you an outline of each so that you understand the options you have available and some example websites to start with. Note that these are only some of the free internet marketing options available to you and most overlap in terms of maximizing your positioning in the "natural search" results for search engines. Your free "social" internet marketing options include: Content Sharing: Example site: Squidoo - Where you simply post information to share with others. You could be posting information about a single idea or event (such as an upcoming training) or simply sharing information about yourself or your company. These are narrative style posts that are designed to create interest and enhance your positioning on search engines. Article Posting: Example Site: Ezine Articles, Idea Marketers - Taking content sharing a step further, you become an author and create articles (much like this one) designed to educate and inform. You then can 'post' these articles to various sites on the internet so that they can be viewed and shared with e-zine (electronic magazine) publishers. While article posting may increase your search engine ranking, the intention behind article posting is to give good information in your content so that online publishers will use your articles in their e-zines and extend your marketing reach to their readers. This gives you an opportunity to speak to a highly targeted group and positions you as an expert in your field. Book Marking: Example site: Digg, del.icio.us - Services that allow you to "flag" or "book mark" individual pages on the internet that interest you. This allows you to form a network of all of the places on the internet where you have content and link them to each other. Great for improving your search engine traffic and also allows your web visitors to access all of the information you have posted online. Fantastic to cross promote with other marketers and to 'give back' to other authors that you believe are offering valuable information. Social Sites: Example Sites: Face Book, MySpace, Direct Matches, Yuwie, Wowzza - These are networking or social gathering sites for internet users. Much like offline networking clubs, users set up a personal profile and then introduce themselves to other members. Online the networking is done by requesting other users to become your "friend" and view your profile. You can then exchange information and, depending upon the site, interact through groups with users with similar interests. Blogging: Example Site: Blogger - A blog in its basic form is simply an online diary, a place where you can share your knowledge, thoughts, feelings, opinions, etc. with the online community. Many people keep personal blogs to let family and friends know what they are up to; others post blogs to rally support for their organizations or causes while business owners can use blogs to share updated information with their customer and to advertise their business. To be successful, a blog needs to be "updated", or have posts added to it frequently - most popular blogs have daily (or more frequent) postings. Blog entries tend to be shorter and more relaxed in nature than article postings and often include pictures and/or videos. All online network marketing campaigns should include a blog as part of your overall marketing strategy Video Sharing: Example Site: YouTube - The social media that is exploding beyond all belief. This technology allows you to create a video and upload this to the Web for other users to view. Video sharing has already made superstars out of previously unknown musical artists by the "viral effect" created when users share the videos with their friends and networks. For the network marketers, video sharing is powerful as you can create a video, upload it, then link this to your other social marketing such as blogs, networking sites, content sharing lens etc., etc., etc. Plus many more... The opportunities appear endless, but it is important for you to know that the emphasis in social network marketing is to provide good information. If you approach these methods only with the idea of "selling" either your product or your opportunity, then you will quickly find that you run out of "friends" that are willing to hear your message. Exactly like word-of-mouth advertising in the offline market. So where do you start? I suggest you focus on one method at a time and get your first listing "up" as quickly as possible. If you spend too much time trying to make your first article perfect, then you will probably never actually post anything at all. If you are new to the internet or social marketing, then I suggest that you follow a step-by-step program that shows you exactly where to start. Two resources that I use and recommend are Ann Sieg's "The Renegade Network Marketer" and Mike Dillard's "Magnetic Sponsoring." Both of these systems teach you not only how to generate leads for free, but how to "monetize" the process so that you can actually generate revenue through the process. This helps to overcome another obstacle for many network marketers of not having enough cash flow to build their business. Two things every network marketer needs - more leads and greater cash flow! The perfect combination. Remembering, of course, that anything you do in building your network marketing business needs to be duplicatable by your team, we have chosen to use Mike Klinger's system, the Renegade University, to help us teach our team how to use Web 2.0 technologies to grow their businesses. The Renegade University is the training system for Ann Sieg's the Renegade Network Marketer. This program explains in detail the process of building your network marketing business online and how to attract leads to you instead of you chasing them down, a fantastic system that uses video tutorials to walk you (and your team members) step by step through the process of setting up your social networking "lead attraction" marketing. The exact system that you chose, or the methods that you use, are less important than the mind shift you need to do in order to recognize the value of this new marketing system and then get into action to implement this into your business. So put down that phone, stop cold calling leads and start your social marketing campaign today. You will be amazed by the opportunities that are available to you if you spend the time and energy in learning to maximize Inter-Net-work Marketing. - 2 years ago