If you’re building a network marketing or direct sales business online, you’ve probably researched and tried quite a few different home business recruiting strategies.
One popular tool for online home business recruiting and network marketing in general is blogging. A WordPress blog (on your own domain, not the free type) can help you build credibility and trust, while attracting potential prospects for your network marketing business and any other products or services you might offer.
Having your own blog as your online marketing home base is a proven strategy that works. This is where your visitors and prospects will come to learn more about you and what you do. The thing is, though, how do you get these visitors to your blog in the first place?
When blogging first started becoming popular a few years ago, it was pretty easy to get found online just by doing this. Do some keyword research, write blog posts optimized for your keywords, and then with a little SEO work you could get ranked well in Google and get a good bit of qualified traffic over time.
Blogging and ranking for carefully chosen keywords still works, but with constant changes in how Google and other search engines interpret and rank web content, it isn’t as simple and predictable as it used to be. Now more than ever, it’s critical to find as many other ways as possible to get found online and grab traffic for your blog. Search engine traffic is still an important part of an overall home business marketing strategy, but diversification and getting leads from more diverse sources is the key today.
What if you have the time and are willing to invest in implementing various home business recruiting strategies, but don’t have a big budget for advertising? As expensive as effective online advertising is these days, finding other effective home business recruiting and marketing methods is critical.
Here is the question of the day:
Do you want to find and connect with high quality prospects for your home business, without having to spend a ton of money on advertising? Consider LinkedIn – this is a huge resource for finding potential prospects that is often overlooked.
From my observations, most of the focus on home business recruiting in social networking communities centers on Facebook, Twitter, and to some extent Google Plus. I don’t see a lot of attention on LinkedIn (I’ve sent connection requests to other network marketers on LinkedIn that took weeks to be acknowledged, where a friend request to the same person on Facebook was answered in a day or two).
I believe that many people think of LinkedIn as a stuffy, boring place where people just go to look for jobs and that’s about it. LinkedIn IS different from Facebook in many ways, especially in the sense of the content there.
Facebook is where you look up old friends, post pictures of your kids, share interesting photos and videos, and in general just enjoy discussing life and what’s going on in your world. Facebook can be a HUGE tool for networking and home business recruiting. LinkedIn, though, has more of a focus on networking for business and professional development. This is where the BIG advantage is for network marketers and other home business professionals!
Some things to consider:
- LinkedIn is a professional social network where people gather with the thought of career and lifestyle enhancement
- many professionals on LinkedIn are open to (and actively seeking) additional income opportunities
- many professionals on LinkedIn already possess the leadership skills and have the social connections for success in network marketing
- as of June 2012, there are 175,000,000 registered users on LinkedIn seeking advancement and opportunity
If you don’t already have an account on LinkedIn, consider getting one. The rules for successful networking and home business recruiting on LinkedIn are similar to those for any social networking community.
- focus on meeting people
- focus on connecting
- focus on providing value to others
- focus on being genuine and professional
- never blatantly pitch or recruit in the community
- connections + giving value + focus on helping others = home business recruiting success
Here are some resources that will help you get started on LinkedIn – now is the time, just take time to learn more about the community before you jump in. This is very important. It’s different than any other, but the connections and potential you have here are incredible.
What is LinkedIn? (from the LinkedIn Learning Center) – this is where you can learn some of the basics directly from the LinkedIn documentation. You’ll notice that the emphasis is on employment and careers, but there are LOTS of entrepreneurs and opportunity seekers actively using LinkedIn.
LinkedIn Recruiting Secrets – this is a paid course created by Doug Firebaugh, and is where I picked up a lot of strategies for home business recruiting and marketing that I haven’t seen anywhere else. The price that Doug charges for this is far less than its actual value. Highly recommended.
Did you get some value from this post? If you did, I would really appreciate you sharing it with others! And, your comments are welcome below!
Got a minute? Take a look at what’s working in an online business for me...
About Eldon Beard
Hello Eldon,
Sadie here in France I found your site via B3.
I completely agree with you with regard to LinkedIn when used well it is an excellent business resource on many levels. It is important to fill out the profile as fully as possible and we have found the professional groups formed with in LinkedIn to helpful too. 😉
Thanks Sadie, your LinkedIn profile is VERY important to complete properly. About the groups, this is how you really get traffic to your blog or website, but you have to be consistent and participate regularly, with a focus on helping others and contributing to the community. Very important not to go in with a strictly recruiting mindset. 🙂
Eldon, you have a remarkable way of putting this all together. I must say adding the part at the beginning with building a foundation first. Then sit in a quiet place and focus on a vision of the idea without any limitations and how it should look for the end result. Keep doing this daily with focusing making the vision clearer each time. This is until you can see it just like you know every detail of how it came to be.
You have everything now to recruit yet if you continue to utilize those free email accounts. There is little no no growth for recruiting anyone. No one is going to do business with someone not professional. Tell me would you thing a real business would use a yahoo or live or gmail account. That is for those who are playing business. Get real and when you are looking for a place to have your own domain to create that perfect Blog. Make sure you get business emails with them and not just one.
Eldon, you are great and I am noticing your focus on Affiliate and Network Marking. Those to are sales situation and have high expenses you will have to budget for. Not too many people can afford the cost of ads the are going to be generated. Yet, with the proper motivation and being one who created the product you will make money.
Thank you Eldon your are one of the best visionaries in our industry and I am beginning to understand your agenda for this amazing Site.
Hi William, network marketing isn’t perfect for everyone, but it definitely offers a low cost way to start a home business and can eventually become quite profitable. Expenses don’t have to be high (i.e. advertising) if one is willing to do the legwork and take advantage of free promotional methods (which are plentiful).
Thanks for stopping by, always appreciate your thoughts!
This strategies are awesome! I do agree that when we are just starting a business on the internet we must focus on meeting people, focus on connecting and focus on providing value to others. Since it is a way that most of our clients will have no second thought on us.