If you’re a Network Marketing consultant with any reputable company, you’re in a field of competitors that spans your state, the nation, and possible the globe. How do you compete on a scale like that? Most companies don’t have territories, which can be both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because you can prospect anywhere, but it’s a curse, because you can have an inordinate number of consultants in one market – essentially flooding the market and diluting customer value. What’s a good consultant to do – especially a new consultant?

First don’t panic. Anyone can be successful in Network Marketing by understanding the need to distinguish yourself from your competitors. I’ve written about this before: You are the most important product your company has to offer, and what better way to promote yourself and what you have to offer than through your own website.

Most of you will see the word “website” and shut down. “I’m not computer savvy. I don’t know how to build a website.” Relax. The great thing about being in sales in this day and age is the fact that the playing field has been leveled by the introduction of template driven websites like Blogger and OfficeLive. Don’t wait! Get started now with these 3 top tips:

1. Secure a domain name. If possible secure your own name: “janesmith.com” or “martinjones.com”, etc. Always try for the “.com” domain when possible. There are dozens of online registrars, so there’s no need to pay more than a few dollars for a year’s subscription, and there are some sites that will give you a domain name free for the first year. Just don’t tie yourself into any kind of lengthy contract. If you’re just getting started, you won’t need a lot of bells and whistles. Just get the domain name.

2. Get blogging! I use and recommend blogger.com for all my blogs. It’s a great place to start, with a few different template options from which you can select a style that’s right for you. And it’s free! Since you’re just getting started, it needn’t be elaborate. Plus, because it’s part of the Google network of companies, you have the ability to get your pages indexed right away. Blogs are a great traffic source if you’re writing about valuable information that potential clients and customers will love.

3. Link ‘em up! You can actually “assign” your domain name to your blogger address. That way when someone types in your domain name address “janesmith.com”, they will be taken directly to your most recent blog post.

These are three top tips to build your direct sales business fast using the internet. But this only scratches the surface. It’s one of the fastest ways to start creating traffic for yourself and your business. Use your blog to tell people about you and your business – but be careful! Don’t get yourself blacklisted from your company for using terms, photos, or images/logos that are not approved by your home office. Using a personal website/blog to educate your public about you is a great way to build rapport and help people get to know, like and trust you – but it should never be a place to advertise your opportunity directly – then the site will look too “salesy” and not personal enough.

Remember, this is like doing a personal introduction. Tell people what you’d like them to know before they do business with you, then use personal correspondence to encourage them to check out your company site for ordering or enrollment information.

Once you establish a relationship with a prospect, you have every right to promote your offerings – but not a moment before!

After nearly 10 years in Direct Sales, Lisa Young stopped listening to her up-line and started seeking professional sales and marketing wisdom from the far corners of big business. Today Lisa offers ready-to-use insights, tips and inspiration to others in the Home Party Plan community looking to run their business like a business and achieve success. Lisa’s free monthly newsletter “PartyOn!” features articles from a business perspective designed to help MLM reps reach their booking, sales and recruiting goals. You can sign up at http://www.HomePartySolution.com and get the first chapter of her book FREE!

Twitter is no longer just one of your run-of-the-mill social media services. Twitter has in fact revolutionized social media services to such an extent that Twitter followers no longer just tweet about what they ate for lunch or what time their plane will touch down the airport. Twitter followers are corporate giants, high-profile celebrities, and all the rest of the planet altogether who use this grand daddy of social media services for information, socializing, and huge income-generation through web marketing.

How to use Twitter’s social media services to your business’ best advantage? A large following of course. The more Twitter followers your business have, the wider is your potential customer base, the greater is the possibility of sales conversion.

To increase your Twitter followers, here’s some neat tips:

1. Choose the best Twitter ID – Use a Twitter name that is relevant to your business, such as your business name or your business’ official website or blog. Some popular niche experts even use their real names to attract more Twitter followers. A stand out logo or Twitter avatar completes your Twitter identity.

2. Follow and be followed – Social media services are all about relationships. From a zero following at the start, increase your Twitter followers by following them first. Many of the follows that you created will almost always follow you back in a give-and-take relationship.

3. Learn from the experts – Twitter is one of those social media services that makes it easy to connect with niche leaders and experts. Follow these experts and learn how they tweet. And, if you answer or ask them questions, it seems you actually “know” these experts, and that makes you interesting enough for others to follow.

4. Tweet interestingly – Twitter followers perk up at attention-grabbing stories and images. Social media services often churn out a lot of trivial information, which is why links to interesting stories are always appreciated. When Twitter followers are interested, they re-tweet this interest to others, giving your original tweet increased exposure.

5. Be recognized as a niche expert – Social media services like Twitter allow for experts to rise in the Twittersphere, if you have something relevant to say, that is. So if your business offers a service or an expertise, tweeting about these services in a way that’s useful to Twitter followers will earn you their respect (and re-tweets), and will raise you to the rank of niche expert steadily for added exposure.

6. Use Twitter tools – Tweet Later is very useful as an auto-responder and for automatically sending direct messages to new Twitter followers. And, to increase the people you are following, Humming Bird is a very intelligent tool that automatically follows Twitter users based on search keywords. Twitter is one of the social media services wherein you can follow as much as 5000 people daily, using Humming Bird.

7. Recommend others – The golden rule applies in social media services like Twitter. If you find a tweet interesting or useful, recommend the tweet to your Twitter followers and encourage them to follow. There’s a big chance that you will get the same treatment — your tweets being re-tweeted and recommended to other Twitter followers.

8. Three-peat important tweets – As one of the most popular social media services, Twitter gets 24×7 daily user logins. For your important tweets, try posting them three times within the day to get maximum exposure from Twitter followers, who may belong to varied time zones.

By: Debbie A. Everson