I am sure most of you have seen the post on Mashable by Adam Ostrow about MLM Invading Twitter. I recently set up the propelhq twitter account. If you are here you know that we develop social tools for the Direct Sales industry or MLM.
Once I created my new twitter account I instantly began to receive spam followers and messages. People that I initially thought would be interesting to follow soon began to spam me with direct messages and a slew of spam tweets. Working as a Social Media/Technology vendor in the Network Marketing industry for the last few years I have spent a lot of time getting to know the industry and how social networking fits in. Spammers and scammers are horrible for social networking and direct sales.
In recent meetings with top distributors we discussed how they were using Facebook as a” tool”. Quickly the conversation went south. As soon as I heard how they were using it I jumped in. Their thought was by building out their profile and screaming “business opportunity” and “join my team” and “you have to try these products” they would attract and recruit new people. They couldn’t be more wrong.
Social networking and relationships in general are about providing value and the mutual exchange and sharing of thoughts, ideas, interests etc. Not force feeding content down someone’s throat. When I am on Facebook or Twitter I want my time there to mean something. Nobody wants to be plastered with spam and posts / comments that scream scam.
So what can you do? How can you do it right? The big question that everyone is trying to figure out is “can you build your MLM business with social networking and social media?” The short answer to all of these question is – if people are asking you for it and you are giving them something of value then, yes.
While thinking about this post today I came across a blog post from Randy Gage. I don’t know much about Randy, I have never met him, I did not read much more than this post-yet, but I think he did a great job of addressing this topic-read it here.
Here is one of my favorite paragraphs from his post:
“I believe in providing value, giving people a reason to view my stuff, and then offer options (coaching programs, seminars, books and other learning resources) where they can spend money if they like my work and want deeper assistance. So I don’t really make any sales from posting on Twitter directly, but I rake in a lot of dosh because I Twitter.”
All of these tools are a great way to communicate and network when used appropriately. I am still searching for some good tweeters and bloggers that are not going to spam me and make me feel like I am getting scammed. If you know any please comment here or find me on twitter @propelhq.