Why do you need a blog if you are marketing on the internet?  A blog is a MUST for your business in 2010!  But why?  And how can you make money from it?  So many people are shouting that we must get a blog, but you need to understand what the purpose of your blog is.

 1.  You Blog is the ‘Nerve Centre’ of your business!  Everything else is connected or linked to it in some way.  It is the hub, around which all the rest of your business revolves.  It is a friendly, homely place where people hang out and chat, and generally feel comfortable!  If it was a real place, it would be a coffee bar!! lol

 2.  A Blog can generate repeat business.  When someone becomes a customer, they may subscribe to your newsletter or list, or subscribe to your RSS feed, and this leads to repeat business!!

 3.  Market Research.  Because a blog is regularly updated, customers will come back time and time again to see what is new, and you can get them to give feed-back in the form of comments, on what they like, dislike or want to see more of.

 4.  You can keep product reviews in front of your buyers, and introduce new products and services.

 5.  It can be easily syndicated to other sites, which all point back to your blog.  This means that you have your link on other websites such as Twitter and Facebook and other social media sites, and these links all point to your blog.  You need as many links pointing to your blog is you can, because they all help send traffic to it.  Other people who have blogs may be willing to have your link on their own blog.  Also if you submit articles, you can make these link back to your blog page.  If you have lots of links out there, you will raise your ranking considerably.  Alot of traffic equals alot of business.

 6.  It is reasonably easy to set up and very easy to maintain, saving you time and effort in the long run.

 7.  Search Engines love blogs.  This is because they are regularly up-dated and added to, something which search engines love on any web page.

 8.  The site is always fresh, because it is constantly moving on, changing from videos to articles, news items, offers and comments, so it is appealing however many times you visit it.

 9.  Customers and visitors expect a blog nowadays from businesses.  They know about them and expect to be able to visit and check out the latest news in your company and to see if you have any offers on.

 10.  They are lots of fun.  You can mess about with your blog, interacting with your customers and really connecting with them.  This will lead to quality leads for your business and is the reason so many of the BIG Network Marketers have an excellent blog online.

A recent headline in Business Week Magazine said that Blogs will change your business and they advised “Catch Up…or Catch You Later”!!!

Before Larry Beacham found out about LinkedIn, he was considering committing Network Marketing suicide!  In February 2009, not even a year ago, Larry decided that enough was enough and he should give up on MLM.  Before he gave up altogether, he decided to have one last look on the internet.  He was involved in one or two social networks, but had not heard of LinkedIn until he got an email that day from someone in his network of friends, and that email started him off on his journey to the top!

That email explained to him what he was doing wrong in his Network Marketing business.  The message was so clear it made him cry!  It was so simple, yet so powerful! It was about prospecting and it was simply that he should STOP! Yes, stop prospecting. What it told him was that he needed to become a Professional Marketer.  Larry Beacham had no college education, he was actually a TV cable guy at the time.  He had no marketing training. He had never made a video or written an article.  Immediately Larry joined a training system showing him step by step how to market online.

In the next 6 months Larry Beacham generated 1600 leads and over 95% of them were from LinkedIn!  Now these were not just leads, they were INTERESTED leads, who were looking to join an MLM or already in MLM but needed help with marketing.  Most days he got about 30 leads, but on 23rd June this year he got 46 in one day.  In his lead system he held the number 2 spot for recruiting, and the number 4 spot for lead generation.  And out of the 5,500 members at that time, he was ranking in the top 10 for three months.  He had 94 people join his marketing system, and 89 of them were from LinkedIn.

Using LinkedIn for lead generation compares favourably even against paid strategies like Pay Per Click and can generate similar numbers if done correctly.  Of course LinkedIn is a free strategy and with PPC you would need a minimum of $1200 per month behind you to get involved.

LinkedIn is a very professional social site. The average income of members is $109,000 and they include politicians, Best Selling Authors, Corporate CEO’s and such like.  They have over 47 million members in over 800 countries and executives from all Fortune 500 companies.  Because of this, a high standard is communication is required.  This is not Facebook; you cannot just add friends, you need to begin with people you know and you definitely need to get some recommendations before you will be taken seriously.  A recommendation needs to be from someone who you have worked with at some time, who is willing to write a short testimonial about you.

One of the main features of LinkedIn are the groups.  Every section of the community is represented by different groups and it is essential when joining or creating a group that you communicate with people and under no circumstances do you promote your business within the group.  Groups are for networking, offering help and advice and connecting with people.  On Facebook, many people connect with a new ‘friend’ and then immediately present their business to them.  This would not be tolerated on LinkedIn and would probably get you thrown out of the group.

If you request a connection on LinkedIn, you are asked how you know the other person, whether through business, friendship, a classmate etc.  If you do not know the person, you are told not to invite them.  This means that many fewer connections are made and many people give up on their LinkedIn profiles because it is not as simple as inviting someone to be your friend.  However LinkedIn has alot to offer in terms of the quality of the connections you can make if you have the time to involve yourself in the site.

Larry Beacham has now produced a book entitled “The LinkedIn Lead Generation Blueprint“  which tells you all the secrets he has used to generate leads on LinkedIn. He has been dubbed ‘King of LinkedIn’ by Cedrick Harris.

If you want to dive into the marketing system that Larry uses, just fill in your name and email in the form on the right and take the $1 trial for 14 days use of the FULL system, including a video training by Larry Beacham on LinkedIn!!

You’re so excited!  You just attended a meeting about a home based business opportunity and you’ll soon be rich!  You have bought a fantastic box of products and you cannot wait to tell everyone about them!  You are so pumped up when you arrive home and can hardly stop the flow of words from tumbling out, about all the money you are going to make.

 Your views are not shared with your other half! “You’ve spent how much money…?” they say.  “What on earth possessed you?  We can’t afford that.”  Your explanation is not a patch on the words used by the lady at the meeting.  You stand firm and insist that your friends will think it’s great.

 The next day your start making phone calls to your friends to get some support.  Your closest friend says she knew someone who did that for a while but couldn’t make it pay.  After hearing you out whilst you bend her ears, another friend says she agrees with your partner.  So you ring round all of your friends that you can think of and after 2 solid hours when your ear is ringing and your hand is aching from holding the receiver, you hang up, with only one friend who has agreed to pop round for coffee ‘one day’ and have a look.

 What makes it difficult is that when you join an MLM business you are expected to show your products to your family and friends. So when a network marketer decides to search for leads on the internet, they throw their products into everyone’s face! That is not the way to work online.  Actually I don’t think it works that well offline!  If you want to market online, and lots of us do, what you should be marketing is YOURSELF!

 You see people don’t buy products, people buy people.  It is all to do with psychology.  If you did not like the look of someone, you would not buy from them.  If, however, you found the person appealing, in some way and it was a product you wanted, or were interested in, then you would be drawn to them.  Online, when someone needs a mentor, they look around for someone to appeals to them.  My daughter is often drawn to people her own age who she admires, whereas I prefer people in my own age group who seem happy and friendly.

 So how can I sell my products, or my business opportunity I can hear you say?  On the internet you sell yourself first and your opportunity later.  First you find a good photo of yourself and then you start to build relationships with people.  Eventually during one of your talks, your business will be discussed, and then you have an opening.  Maybe you will ask them, or they will ask you.

 Putting up notices all over the internet offering anyone and everyone your business is a big no-no!  You would not ask everyone at a party to join your business, so why do it here?  It is not something you should do.  Therefore it is not correct to do such a thing on Facebook or anywhere on social media. If you look you will see person after person advertising their business, and after awhile, you stop reading them. You must sell yourself.  If people can see that you are worth knowing, that you give value and will help them, they may be attracted to you and want to know more about your business or products!

People often ask me how to start generating leads online quickly and I always suggest they check out listbuilders, such as Viralurl or ListJoe, both of which are recommended by MLM Lead System Pro.  The reason why this is such a good method is that even a complete newbie could copy and paste some good web copy onto Viralurl’s system mailer.

 Viralurl will then send it out to between 3,000 and 6,000 people depending at what level you opted for!!  Great isnt it?  Then you do it again every 3 days for a whole year for the one price!!  No monthly payments, just one yearly payment.  Great value!

 Viralurl is free to join but I would definitely suggest that you take the upgrade offer to at least gold membership to be able to send out emails.  At the gold level you will receive lots of emails from other Viralurl members, which you can look at to win advertising credit with Viralurl.  If you pay for Platinum membership, you can avoid having mail sent to you.  I personally thought the mailings were really helpful,as they showed me how to identify which copy was good and which was rubbish!  Learning everyday!

Does Viralurl do anything else?  Well you can cloak and shorten your URL’s.  For instance, if you are an affiliate marketer, you do not like customers to be aware of that so by cloaking and shortening the URL, your affiliate name is not shown in the address. Handy!  There is also a section which shows you how and where to promote your affiliate link, as well as a mail section and an ad credit section for you to manage your viralbar and banner adverts.

 Colin Kilkert and Frank Bauer, the owners of Viralurl, just recently launched ViralHosts which also is free to join and you can upgrade if you want to send out emails.  The difference with ViralHost is that they will host your Blog, based on CPanel for you!  This is really easy to set up, obviously useful for someone new to internet marketing.

The best part of ViralUrl in my opinion is how easy it is to send out the emails; so quick to set up and operate with pretty regular results.

The trouble with MLM as we are shown it, is that we are sent out, with little idea of what we are doing, to market our business to our friends and family.  They are baffled as to why we think they want to do that same thing to their friends, and start to avoid us and stop answering our calls.

 So you have rung everyone you know, using the ’some will, some wont; next’ principle and when you have no-one left, you start pitching to strangers in the street and in the grocery store.  Sadly now, everyone is wary about these ‘pyramid schemes’, as they sometimes call them, and to be truthful if you think about it, you can see why!

 So if you have run out of friends, or any excitement for the business,welcome to the NEW SCHOOL of Network Marketing.  And the one way to start your learning curve is the same way that all the leaders on the internet started:  Mike Dillard – Take a bow!!

 If you dont recognise the name, you soon will, because Mike Dillard’s Magnetic Sponsoring Book is where this whole system to replace old school MLM started!  At the start, Mike did what everyone in MLM did; the one to ones, hotel meetings and leafleting in malls, hoping customers would approach you, not vice versa.  And so Magnetic Sponsoring was born.  He can show you how to put your business into profit quickly and how to sponsor lots of distributors into your business.

 If you want to start marketing your MLM online, Mike actually GIVES AWAY his 7 day Video Bootcamp, showing you step by step how you can get prospects to come to you.  You MUST read his Magnetic Sponsoring book to get you into the correct mindset for marketing on the internet.  I myself didnt have a clue about how to market my Network Marketing business online until I read it and had several ‘ahaa’ moments as I went through it!

 Mike now has several other products; Building on a Budget, Black Belt Recruiting, MLM Traffic Formula and PPC Domination, all of which are completely brilliant, give great value and are definitely a requirement for everyone immediately if they want to do business on the web, and indeed  become a leader!  I myself would not spend any time trying to explain about marketing online, when Mike does it so succinctly himself!

1.  Make sure your profile picture is a bright and happy, head and shoulders photograph of you.  Do NOT use a photo of your product!  Marketing on the internet is all to do with ATTRACTION Marketing and nobody will be attracted to a picture of a bottle of energy drink.  Never promote your product at the front end.  You should be promoting YOURSELF! 

 2.  Make sure you fill in your profile details fully.  Anyone who is interested in you and wishes to get to know you, may lose interest quickly if you have nothing  in your profile.  Particularly important is what you have been doing, what has led you to where you are now, and any hardships you have had on the way.  Interests and hobbies are always good so anyone reading them can find some sort of connection with themselves.

 3.  Post regular updates.  If you have nothing interesting to say, many people like to read an inspirational quote. Tell people what you are doing; if you have just finished an article and put it on your blog, tell everyone.  Direct  them to your blog to read it!  The occasional funny anecdote is always well received.  If you have just done some training, let everyone know.

 4.  Add friends!  Only a few  at a time or Facebook will shut down your account, but 20 – 30 a day is absolutely fine.  Find people you want to follow by going to some of the motivational groups and fan pages and invite friends from the group.  It is better to write a little note with your invitation of how you found them, or some people will not be prepared to become your friend, particularly if they have protected their Facebook page.

 5.  Find groups that appeal to you.  There are many  different kinds of groups but if you are in MLM join whichever appeal to you.  Personal development groups are always good places to find business people.  And obviously you can even join a group which goes by its product name, such as Avon or Monavie.

 6.  Post comments on groups walls as well as other peoples walls.  Join in group discussions, or start your own topic of discussion.  Again, do not advertise your business on these walls.  Someone reading these posts will zone out immediately because person after person does exactly that.  You are marketing YOU.

 7.  Interact with people.  Some people will want to connect with you and may ask questions.  Answer them back; get into conversation with them.  They could need help and you may be able to help them.  When they begin to trust you, your business might enter into the conversation naturally or they may look further into your profile and see your links.  In the right hand side of your home page you will see when people are having a birthday and you can post birthday wishes on their wall.

 8. When you have a reasonable number  of friends, you could begin your own Facebook Group.  It may be Personal Development or you can offer help or mentoring.  Send an invitation to your friends, not more than 50 a day, asking them if they would like to join your group.  Once  they accept you can chat to them on your page, send them invitations to conference calls or webinars or just mail them helpful or inspirational information.  Whatever you    think may be of  value to them.

 9.  When you have set up your Page, do not just leave it with a dozen people in it. It will need work like anything else.  Continue to invite people, mailing messages to people and posting new topics on the wall and generally giving good value.  This will make people who join to see you as a leader rather than another marketer.

 10. Always give value.  Come from contribution.  Help people as much as you can to get what they need, and you will get what you want. Be positive always; if you have nothing of value to say, say nothing!  And dont critisise other people.  Encourage, help and suggest improvement instead.  Remember, people buy people FIRST.

For more ways to get value from your Facebook account, watch this FREE training: http://facebook.www.PrimeMLMTraffic.com

Ok, so yesterday I wrote an article, which is nothing new, but this was my first since I had purchased Automatic Article Submitter.  It took me several hours of reading instructions and playing around to understand the value of AAS, but WOW; now I can completely understand the tremendous value that this has!

When I write an article and put it on my Blog, how much traffic am I generating to my Blog?   Not much!   Obviously some from all the other sources on the internet but not nearly as much as I can do with the Automatic Article Submitter.

You see, once I have written my article I can then  put in lots of alternative words and phrases; even the titles, and this awesome machine spins all the different words  round to create lots and lots of different versions of my article, then  BLASTS it out to nearly 300 article directories all around the internet!

What’s  more  in the signature box, I can enter  links pointing to my Blog or wherever I want them to go so my links are all over the web!   So when Google comes along and sees  hundreds of articles linking back to my web pages it decides that it must be important enough to rank highly  on the FIRST PAGE  of Google!!  For Free!!  Unbelievable but true!   Therefore this fantastic product is worth its weight in gold.

I do admit that it takes some time to set up, but now I know how it all works it will save me a huge amount of time and effort.  To try to open an account with each one of the directories by hand would be incredibly time-consuming and the AAS does the majority of the work for you.   Some of the directories require you to fill in details yourself, which cannot be done automatically, and you have to decide what category your article should be in but other than that it does it all.

So if you write articles and want to get massive exposure for them, I cannot recommend Automatic Article Submitter too highly.  The owner of the Submitter, Milan Kosanovic, replied quickly to an email I sent him  with all the help I required;  a very nice guy.  It will save you lots of time and frustration from dealing directly with the directories and will get you tons of traffic!

Get your copy of Automatic Article Submitter here: http://bit.ly/4UIUNu

On Day One when I signed up with Twitter and tweeted something along the lines of ‘don’t understand what all the fuss is about’!  I never imagined it would take off as it has done!  But I persevered and now several months down the line I have put out nearly 500 tweets and have well over 2,000 following, so I must be going in the right direction.

It was never my intention to use Twitter for attraction marketing but then my first foray into internet marketing came several months later and the buzz surrounding Twitter was getting louder and louder as everyone realised its full potential.

By far the most common question someone will ask when I mention Twitter is ‘but what on earth do you say?’  The problem is that most people not currently using Twitter do not understand the value and probably never will until they set up an account and start interacting!

So what can you say?  Well to start with anything that comes into your head, but here  are a few ideas!

1      No one wants a blow-by-blow account of your every move!

2     Everyone likes to laugh so if you find something amusing, share it!

3     If you have a particular interest, share information or articles you find with people.

4     Favourite quotes always go down well.

5     If you are using Twitter for business, don’t just push your business 24/7.Try to keep to the 80/20 rule, 80% of your tweets should be entertaining, interesting or inspirational, 20% business.

6     When you read a tweet which you find interesting, RT (re-tweet) it to your followers.  (Just put out a post beginning with ‘RT @personstwittername then copy and paste the tweet, then post it)

7     Ask questions; people love to help.

8     Give value!  If you interact, RT people and generally enjoy Twitter you will give value and get lots of followers.

9     Tweet regularly. 

10   Don’t shout too much – generally capital letters mean you are shouting!

So that’s it, if you haven’t got a Twitter account sign up for one now, its lots of fun!!

Sue Collier

www.PrimeMLMTraffic.com