Who Else Wants to Learn How To Use Social Networks To Generate Hot Targeted Leads For Their Business?

Social Networks can be an online network marketers worst enemy or your best friend when it comes to lead generation. Here you will learn what to do and what not to do to attract the ideal prospects for your business.

First, lets go over what they are:

The names says it all really. It's a place online where like minded people meet up from all around globe. Usually, you find these networks or I should say they find you as an invite from a generic email message saying, "Hey {your name here}, you friend {friends name} has invited you to join them on {social site here}".

Some top Social Networking site include:

MySpace.com: Over 200 million members. This site is massive, boasting the largest membership of any social networking site on the Internet.

Facebook.com: Was initially intended for college students -- it branched out, and now allows everyone membership. 70 million members.

Linkedin.com: 12.5+ million members -- a powerful tool for business networking.

Friendster.com: 29 million members. Friendster was considered the top online social networking service until around April 2004, when it was overtaken by MySpace. Demographic studies indicate users are from 17 to 30 years old.

Stumbleupon.com: Boasting 2.75 million users, StumbleUpon is a web browser plugin that allows its users to discover and rate webpages, photos, videos, and news articles. A great way to get website promotion. Bought by eBay for $75 million in May 2007.

del.icio.us: The website del.icio.us (pronounced as "delicious") is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks. The site was founded by Joshua Schachter in late 2003, and is now part of Yahoo!.

digg.com: Digg is a website made for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the Internet, by submitting links and stories, and voting and commenting on submitted links and stories, in a social and democratic spirit.

orkut.com: Orkut is an Internet social networking service run by Google and named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten. It claims to be designed to help users meet new friends and maintain existing relationships. Now has a membership of 57 million.

Twitter.com: A free social networking service that allows users to send "updates" (text-based posts that are up to 140 characters long) via SMS, instant messaging, email, the Twitter website, or an application such as Twitterrific. The site has become very popular in only a few months -- a lot of people are watching it.

Classmates.com: 40 million members. One of the oldest social networking sites around, Classmates was kicked off in 1995, and has proven to be a great way for members to to connect with old friends and acquaintances from throughout their lives.

Meetup.com: 2 million members. Meetup.com is an online social networking portal that facilitates offline group meetings in various localities around the world. Meetup allows members to find and join groups unified by a common interest, such as politics, books, games, movies, health, pets, careers or hobbies.

Yahoo! 360° (a.k.a Yahoo! Days) is a personal communication portal similar to orkut and MySpace -- it is currently in the beta-testing phase. It integrates features of social networking, blogging and photo sharing sites.

The Big Guys Are Great But...

The little guys should not be over looked. There are gold in smaller niche social sites specifically for networkers and home based business owners and business seekers.

Some of my favorite niche sites that I'm a member of

HomeBasedBusiness.com For People who have and are looking to start a home based business ;-).

BetterNetworker.com Primarily for those of us who are looking to network with others home based business owners who monetize through network marketing, direct sales and MLM. Most people here are looking for give or receive information on how to leverage the internet for lead generation and prospecting.

So Now You Know What Social Networks Are and Where To Find Them... How Do YOU Use Them To Build Your Business?

Great Question! I'm glad you asked because their many networkers shooting themselves in the foot by using techniques straight out of "How To Loose Friends And Alienate Prospects" (coming to a youtube.com video near you).

The first thing you want to do is

• study the culture of the community.

  Identity who the leaders of the communities are. These are usually the group starters, the top contributors of content and topic starters.

  Get to know them and ask a lot of questions about what to do and how. I haven't had anyone turn me down when I ask questions about their experience in the community.

• Introduce yourself and get social!

  If you are looking for a "hard sell" or for people to just jump into your business when you put up a banner ad or link, you are in for a rude awakening (See "Don'ts of Networking On Social Networks").

  Always remember the first rule of business... people do business with people they know like and trust. That's more true than ever in the internet age and social networks.

  Be open, generous with helping others in any way you can and more importantly BE YOURSELF!
  ...and speaking of helping...
  

• Take every opportunity to help someone else who asks a question about something you know about.

• Save recruiting directly about your business to one-on-one, private conversation and ONLY WHEN ASKED.

Your objective is to spark an interest in YOU by drawing people out of their own shell by doing your best to help them feel comfortable in your space. This will help you get a dialogue going.

Once you have dialogue you're one step closer to a new friend, customer or even business partner!


Your partner in success,


Malika Duke

• Watch me in Action! See how I use the top network marketing social networks to attract paying prospects.

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