Whether you are talking about a MLM network, a social network, or an online community success depends on the same question: Are you giving people a reason to join your network?
Give Value First
The question is simple, but few networkers and community builders make it their core objective. That is why many fail.
Successful network or community building is dependent on joining, participating, and promoting. These activities imply that people are devoting time and resources to your network. This only happens effectively and sustainably if your network quickly returns personal value to your members.
Teach Success
The best way to return immediate value in any community is to teach success. You are appealing as a network and connector because you have already achieved some level of success. Teaching the formula for success will show your prospective members that you value them.
Reduce your teaching to simple, easy to understand, bite-size morsels of knowledge. Remember most members are less experienced in your area of expertise. They expect you to add value by giving them the most direct path to success. Which means simplifying the complex.
Give Actionable Examples
Achieving results fast is the secret to stimulating the growth and promotion of your network. Design action-oriented examples that attack typical low hanging opportunities, common mistakes, or guaranteed big wins.
These early wins will motivate your members to learn more, understand deeper, and participate. It also turns on the referral machine. Pride in their early successes and immediate results will drive them to show others.
Motivate Action
You can share benefits and teach brilliant pearls of knowledge, but without action there will be disappointment. Motivating your network to action is an individual sport.
Don’t simply cheer the group or the network as a whole, but try to touch and motivate individuals. Ask individual members about their specific goals, objectives, and results. Then motivate and keep them accountable. Often creating a super community member is as simple as motivating that person to meet their own goals.
5 Simple Steps to Own Your Internet Market Niche, for Free
June 14, 2008 By
At no point in marketing history has it been so easy to own your market. If you have a product, service, or personal interest to offer and want to be the Internet leader in this space the path to success is relatively straight-forward. The strategy is really as simple as: If you want to be the expert, BE the expert. Fill your niche market with the content, discussions, and answers and then make them authoritative. Here are 5 simple steps to filling the void and becoming the expert.
Start with a Niche
This is where I work the hardest and spend the most time with my clients–discovering and finding their first niche to attack. Your starting point should be an inventory or survey of your business. What are the products and services you offer? Who is your ideal customer? How did your current customers find you? Are there any similarities in your customers’ personal interests? What makes your approach unique?
This inventory should have given you a few key concepts. Those concepts contain keywords that define you and your current expertise. Refine these concepts into a list of keywords and take the next important step–find out if anyone cares!
Go to Google’s Keyword Tool and see which of these keywords or phrases get a significant amount of search inquiries. Once you have a few picked out that have a reasonable number of inquires per day it is time to begin taking control of those terms.
Build a Foundation
Owning any space on the Web is solely about authoritative content. Internet consumers go to the Web with their questions. Search engines index, sort, and prioritize the answers they get. They do that by what their little automated “spiders” conclude are authoritative. Your challenge is to convenience these little pieces software code and your curious Web searches when they arrive you are the expert on topic.
To become the authoritative source in your chosen niche you have to create the center point for your authority. That focal point, of course, is a website. The quickest and simplest strategy to build an authoritative repository of content is a blog. Depending on your expertise you can host your own or create a free one at WordPress.com. Once you have your site you should systematically begin posting (blogging) articles that tell readers (and the search engines) what you know about each of those keywords and phrases that you know they will query when faced with the problem you can solve (i.e., an FHA mortgage, finding short sale bargains, setting up a day trading business, building a downline in your network marketing business, etc.).
Now that you have your foundation, don’t forget the two final important pieces: give them something free to take away (and pass around to friends), and a way to contact you.
Create a Network
With a focus on what your niche is and where you are going to send people to prove it, you need to build a fan base. Don’t get confused. These are not customers. Your network should be “sneezers” and entertainment. Your network serves three purposes: promote, validate, and entertain people when they arrive. Understanding your goal(s) in building the network I will share a few of my favorite techniques:
- Promoters: the quickest way to build an initial base of promoters is using your Blogroll, MyBlogLog, StumbleUpon, and Digg. Find like minded (content and topics) individuals and promote their stuff. That means links at first and traffic over time.
- Validators: This takes a bit more time because you need to build a bit of credibility. Once you have a good base of quality content, drop an email to some of the top experts and bloggers in or related to your area of expertise. If they like it you will begin to see yourself mentioned, linked to, and promoted.
- Entertainers: Most of the time these will come on there own. They are the colorful personalities and commenters. They are the rivals. Sometimes they are bloggers or commenters that take your counterpoint. Or, my favorite, competitors that validate you are a threat to their business.
This group of folks swirling about your websites widen the funnel and opportunity for customers to find you and be confirmed that you are the expert.
Become Authoritative
Being authoritative is sort of the capstone concept. It is the result of creating a solid foundation of quality content and creating a validating and promoting group of people around that content. This powerful combination creates an obvious authority to visiting consumers looking for answers and a strong link structure that tells Google, Yahoo!, and MSN’s little search bots this is the place to find out about [fill in your niche here].
Expand the Niche
Owning your little niche of the market is only the start of the opportunity. You may start with how to create mind blowing email campaigns and expand to all of direct marketing. You might start with FHA loans in Livonia, MI and expand to the Nations’ “Home Loan Experts.” You may start with how I use Twitter and expand to a social media guru.
Design your approach with expansion in mind. Create milestones and benchmarks to assess where you are and where you are headed. And don’t forget what you are attempting to do. This is not your teenager’s MySpace page. You are not looking to gather a bunch of meaningless followers and funny quips on your web pages. You are running a marketing campaign and business website. You are demonstrating that you are the professional, the expert, customers want providing the solution to their problem. You want to generate solid leads for sales.
Nothing generates more leads and produces better sales results than being the best in the business. The Internet creates an infinite space to work within, frame off your niche and become the expert. Then build on that platform to whatever success you can conceive.
