Strategies for Implementing Social Media Marketing in Direct Sales

As direct sales companies begin to contemplate social media, and learn about how this technology can grow sales, recruiting, and customer loyalty, it's important to plan. Ultimately nothing replaces the core business activities of sales and recruiting,but social media provides direct sales consultants with an additional revenue stream, which in turn provides companies with an additional revenue stream.

When social media is implemented effectively, based on a well-thought-out plan, the results can have a dramatically positive impact on the bottom line, as well as on a companies ability to attract and retain recruits, and delight customers. It is therefore important that you have a strategy in place before diving into social media for your direct sales business. You need to identify who you're trying to reach (your targeted niche market) and your goals. By spending time in the planning phases first, you ensure that your social media activities are targeted, efficient, and effective.
4 Quick Start Social Media Strategies

1. FORUMS/BLOGS: Find 10 blogs or discussion forums that your market may have reason to read - Remember to think of it from a potential client point of view and not your own. Think broader than your business! For example:If you have a personal development home based business - blogs on wellness, marketing, networking, success, mentoring etc.

2. TWITTER: Join Twitter, which is primarily for meeting new people. I find that most people that use Twitter are business people. This is a much better tool for finding people interested in joint ventures, business arrangements, and information (preferably free.)
- use your first and last name as your username and if that is not available add an underscore, middle initial or choose first initial, last name upload a photo of yourself, people without photos are viewed suspiciously (don't ask, they just are)... twitter is casual, so think business casual.
- don't start promoting ... listen, watch, observe ...this also can be a great way to finding those 10 blogs you need to follow ...
- anytime you see anything of value provided by other people "retweet it" and give the source the proper credit
- Google "Twitter etiquette" and "Twitter best practices" and read up on more details on how to best leverage Twitter

3. BLOG: Start your own blog. Just go to wordpress, sign up and write a simple top 4 list ...see how it works, how it feels. ..no commitment .....just a test drive.

4. INSIGHTS: Start logging your daily insights in a word document - ask yourself what are the things that came up at work today that others may find interesting or useful to their business? Within a week you will have dozens of topics for potential blog posts.

The above list should take no more than a day to complete. Your effort will result in a basic foundation for you to generate more leads and further build your brand by tapping into social media.