Well, how arrogant does that title sound when you read it aloud?

But it was a comment made to me the other day and I have to admit it left me quite shocked.  I was showing a contact on one of the social networking sites some excellent training I had received and the remark to me was “how can someone who has only been in the Internet Marketing business for less than 2 years teach me anything”?

The successful Internet Marketer I had introduced this person to is an Award Winning Internet Coach, and when he hosts webinars, no less than 800 of his members turn out to hear and be educated with what he has to teach.  So, for someone to make such a snap judgement after listening to only a few minutes intro, left me quite speechless (not an easy feat by any stretch of the imagination lol).

You see, I have never been someone who is afraid to admit they don’t know something and I always say “a day wasted is a day I haven’t learned something”.  I am never too proud to ask whoever is the best person to teach me how to do something and that is because I do not judge people.

What I’ve found since coming into this industry is there are a lot of ruthless people – yes we find this in all walks of life but there seems to be an abundance of them in Internet Marketing.  People who profess to ‘know it all’ and really only ‘think they know it all’.  No human being ever ‘knows it all’ when it comes to anything, there is always room for improvement.

So, please forgive me venting in this blog post, but my message is to this type of person ‘don’t think you’re all that, allow yourself to swallow that pride you have but be careful of choking!  I would also ask you to be prepared to accept that newer people into the industry bring fresh eyes to what is an ever evolving and fast moving business that doesn’t rest on its laurels – you may do this inadvertently because ‘no-one can teach you anything’ and this will be at your peril!

I have lots of friends on social media sites and it can be a great marketing tool when used correctly.  It allows you to brand yourself, to meet, network and build all kinds of relationships with like-minded people.

The most common error however is that many marketers constantly lead with a sales pitch of their opportunity.

On sites like Facebook, Twitter and others, people don’t really care about your business opportunity.  They care about themselves and what other people are up to.  So with that in mind, instead of pitching your business to people right out the gate, develop an interest in others.  People love to talk about themselves especially if someone else seems interested in them.

You can lead the conversation by asking questions about them on topics related to what you would ideally like to talk to them about.  For example, ask what they do for a living and this in turn may prompt a similar reciprocal question.  This is when you TALK about your business but don’t PITCH it, just have a conversation.

You can tell right away if you are talking with a potential prospect.  If they do seem interested, give them a link where they can learn more.  Ideally this should be your blog site or hub page and even better if it has a Bio page included.  This way, the visitor will really get a feel for who you are and what you have to offer.

It is OK to post an ad on your social media sites wall, but it is even better to provide value in your posts.  The more value you can add and the more interest you generate in your posts, the more people will pay attention to you and seek out your profile to learn more.

In your posts you can be as dramatic as you like, controversial even, funny or whatever it takes to get attention.  Never, ever be negative or attack someone, this is so not cool.

If you really don’t like someone’s posts, then it is very easy just to delete them from your friends’ list.  Personal attacks put you in a bad light and this can have negative consequences for you.

You can drive a more targeted social media list by starting a group connected to your business opportunity.  Start off by inviting all your friends to it, and then have them invite their friends also.  You must be prepared to bring value to the group however, but it is a forum for you to promote your opportunity.

So long as you continue to provide more value than pitch and people feel they come away from your posts with something to enrich their life, they will begin to promote you without the need for pitching.

In summary:

• Build relationships with your social media friends
• Don’t lead by pitching your business opportunity
• Don’t spend time on people who are not interested in you or your business
• Nurture relationships with people who are
• Don’t send people directly to your landing page
• Send them to a blog or hub page
• Don’t spam your friends or followers with ads
• Always provide valuable content
• Don’t be boring
• Do whatever it takes in your headlines to get people’s attention

A great site for learning all the technical know how’s on Facebook

I was just reading an article on the BBC website this morning that focussed on Facebook and how it has now grown to having a global audience of 300 million active users each month.

The Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg stated that they had not expected to make a profit until 2010 but were way ahead of schedule with this.

The site is gathering about 5 million new users each week and this equates to 50 million in the last 75 days.  It is not hard to see therefore that this social networking site is definitely at the cutting edge of all others.  The site’s popularity was evident to me recently when I was on holiday in Europe.  The resort we stayed in hosted a bank of PCs, I think there were about 8 in total and they always had some young person sat in front of them.  I found it really interesting that every time I passed, each and every one of them were on their Facebook page.  I also noticed some older people also using Facebook and this is because it is an excellent way of building networks in the business world also.

Facebook is primarily funded through advertising and what I noticed and don’t think it’s a coincidence is that when I open up my Facebook home page, there are age appropriate adverts on there.  I’m not going to say what they are, but one could take offence with some of them if one didn’t feel as old as they were!

Companies who are not using Facebook to promote their products through direct advertising are missing a huge opportunity to get in the face of 300 million people each month.

Facebook Lite (no, not for those looking to save calories while using Facebook)

The recent launch of Facebook Lite has not gone unnoticed either and is probably partly attributable for the recent rapid growth in users.  Facebook Lite will be faster and simpler than the main site because it offers fewer services.  Initially it is designed to support users in developing countries where bandwidth constraints make the current version too slow to use.  At the moment it is only available in India and the US.  Many industry watchers said they believed that even users with good internet connections might well flock to Facebook Lite because of its new look and ease of use.

Twitter seems to be at the forefront of any discussion regarding social networking but I’m not convinced that it can ever match up to the popularity and profitability of Facebook.  If Facebook continues to expand its platform and incorporate some of the Twitter features, this could spell trouble for the Twitter industry.