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Dear readers,

I find that we can occasionally learn about network marketing and social media marketing from traditional media.  This week I’m going to share some great network marketing lessons I picked up while watching American Pickers on the History Channel.

I’ve written in the past on social media marketing lessons we can get from professional poker players, Major League Baseball, and the Voice on NBC.

This time we’re going to take a totally different course. We’re going to talk about the tv show, American Pickers and how Frank & Mike would make great network marketers.

I’m visiting my parents for a few weeks because my dad had surgery and my business allows me to take time off and travel as need be.  Thank goodness I’m a full time network marketer and don’t have a J.O.B.  My dad and I were watching the History Channel today and one of our favorite shows, American Pickers came on.

American Pickers is a tv show about Frank & Mike who are “pickers”. They basically pick through what most people consider junk . Frank & Mike find antiques and collectibles that they buy and resell.  They help people who have amassed too much stuff get rid of some of their extra stuff Sometimes the people are emotionally attached and don’t want to sell.

In the episode I saw today Frank & Mike bought an old Phillip Morris tobacco sign. It is a massive sign with the Phillips Morris boy on it, and had a waving automatic arm.  One of the things that Frank & Mike said was people often ask them how they got the people to sell these outrageous collectible items.  Mike’s response was “We ask”.

That’s a great network marketing lesson so let me repeat it for you.  When asked how they get people to sell the items Frank & Mike said they simply ask the people if they’d be willing to sell.

How often in our business are we too afraid of someone saying no to ask them if they want to join our business.  That’s a great tip from American Pickers.

But there was more.  Another great MLM tip was when Frank & Mike found a lead. The guy’s name was “Bear” and he was an old carnival guy that had a bunch of stuff they’d love to buy. However he wasn’t willing to sell anything to Frank & Mike on that trip.  So what did Frank & Mike do?

They wrote Bear’s name and telephone number on the chalkboard back in the office.  You see they have a hot prospects chalk board in their office. Every time they’re back in the office they see the names on the chalkboard and it gives them motivation to call their prospects back.  They said they call their prospects back, every week, until the prospect tells them to stop calling.

That’s another great network marketing lesson.  Put your hot prospects on a list where you can see them daily. Then use that list as a reminder to call your prospects back EVERY WEEK until they tell you to stop calling them or join your business.

I think Frank & Mike would be great network marketers.  They understand that the first step is to ask for the sale. The second step is persistence.

What other traditional media do you get network marketing lessons and MLM tips from?

- Ben Fitts

MLM Training > social media marketing

Dear readers,

Occasionally I like to comment on social media marketing lessons we can learn from other industries.  I wrote about lessons we can learn from television shows like the Voice or Major League Baseball teams.

This weekend is the largest poker event of the year, the World Series of Poker main event final table.  I thought in homage to this major poker event we’d talk about social media marketing lessons we can learn from looking at professional poker players.

We can learn a lot by looking at the Twitter accounts of some professional poker players. 

The most popular poker pro on Twitter, is probably also one of the most popular in the world. Texas Dolly, Doyle Brunson. The godfather of modern poker has done a great job developing a following on Twitter.  Doyle has over 382,000 followers on Twitter.  This makes sense considering Doyle is a legend, has a great personality, and has a lot of fans in the real world as well as the internet.

Let’s take a look now at two more famous poker pros. Daniel “Kid Poker” Negreanu and Phil “the poker brat” Hellmuth.

Daniel has 135,000 followers and Phil only has 101,000.  Phil is considered a poker legend. He has won more WSOP bracelets than any other person.  I’m not going to get into which of these two players is better. They play different types of games and to compare the two would be difficult.  For this conversation we’re going to simply talk about their Twitter following.

Why does Daniel have 34,000 more followers on twitter? Over 30% more than Phil? Is Daniel more popular than Phil in the offline world? If he is more popular is he 30% more popular than Phil? I seriously doubt it.  I know people like Daniel but I daresay more people know Phil.

Let’s examine some possible reasons for Daniel Negreanu having more Twitter followers than Phil Hellmuth.

#1 Daniel tweets more often than Phil. Daniel has posted 8956 tweets. Phil has only done 2322.  That means Daniel has had more to say on twitter. That means he gets retweeted more often. He gets more replies and comments from fans, which other twitter users see.  By Daniel tweeting more often he has an opportunity to get more followers.

#2 Personality. Phil has a strong personality but he doesn’t seem to apply it to his tweeting. Most of his tweets lately are about where he is eating and who he is eating with… or his charity or whatever… Basically Phil’s tweets are boring. Daniel tweets about a variety of topics including complaining. I hate to say it but sometimes negative posts and complaints get more responses than positive ones. I think if Phil let his personality show a bit more on Twitter, he would easily have as more followers.

#3 Daniel also recently wrote a blog post about being real online.  I think he’s spot on.  Whatever you do online you don’t want to be boring. If you want to develop a following you want your personality to show.  You’ll attract real followers and fans that way because they’ll find common ground with you. Whether you’re right or wrong, having an opinion is better than not having an opinion at all.  It seems counter productive because sometimes we want to appeal to everyone, but when we do we actually are less popular.  By appealing to everyone we don’t let our true selves show and don’t develop true fans.

Now let’s go one step further.

Famous twitter personality and professional poker pro John-Robert Bellande (BrokeLivingJRB). John-Robert is probably more famous for his personality than his poker playing.  He isn’t a slouch as a proker pro with two consecutive deep runs in the WSOP main event in 2010 and 2011 show he has some skills at the table.  However his following on Twitter shows how important having a dynamic personality can be to developing a loyal following of fans.

JRB has a little over 29,000 Twitter followers at the moment.  That is more than many top poker pros. I’m not going to list names. I don’t want to insult anyone but there are many quality poker pros that have 5k or 10k followers and yet JRB is about to break 30k followers.

What makes JRB unique is his personality.  He willing posts bankroll updates, even when his bank roll is busted (like it is currently.)  He posts pictures of the parties, the ladies, the penthouses and suites.  He posts about living the life regardless of his bankroll.  This dynamic personality, whether you like him or not, attracts followers.

Note to JRB. You will remain broke as long as you keep your twitter handle. You are telling yourself subconsciously every time you look at your twitter handle that you are broke. Can you image what it is like to tell yourself 20 times a day that you’re broke. Imagine saying “Your Broke”, “Your Broke”, “Your Broke” to yourself every day. Guess what you’ll be? Broke.  You’ll self sabotage yourself. That’s the law of attraction at work.  That’s your subconscious mind at work.  JRB is cosntantly feeding his subconscious negative thoughts about money.

How does this apply to your network marketing business and developing a following on Twitter?

• Let your personality show. Don’t be afraid to offend people.
• Don’t be afraid to have an opinion. Having an opinion is better than having none.
• Be active and participate. Being active can be a way we can pick up more fans.

MLM Training > social media marketing

Dear Readers,

Do you make cold calls?

Or do you have prospects calling you first?

Yesterday I get a phone call early in the morning. I actually woke up to take the call (I work for myself from home so I don’t use an alarm clock unless I have a meeting or am traveling.)

I answer the phone and it is a guy cold calling me to sell me some social media system.

Hello? Really?

He’s selling a social media system but he is calling me on the old fashioned telephone to prospect me?

Ironic.

I won’t go into too much detail about the call. I don’t want to offend anyone but it was really funny to me that someone cold calls me offline to sell me a system to market using social media online.

• Why isn’t he using the system he is trying to sell me?
• If he was doing so well in social media, wouldn’t he be able to attract people to him?
• Wouldn’t he be connecting to prospects on social media platforms?
• Wouldn’t other prospects be seeing his success and willingly calling him first to find out how he is doing it?

Be wary of gurus selling you a system they aren’t even using!

You see this guy was a smoke and mirrors guy. He sells you a system for social media because he knows social media is hot. He actually doesn’t understand social media and doesn’t know how to market on social media.  This is also why he is selling this system.  He may not even know if it works. He just knows this is a hot topic and even a bad salesman can find a few gullible people to buy a system from him because social media is hot.

What I teach in my Nichework Marketing webinars (there is a webinar today at 1 PM Eastern.) is to get prospects calling you.  It starts with finding your niche.

This guy’s niche was social media but he had less than 500 followers on Twitter. I couldn’t even find a Facebook fan page for the guy. (And he’s selling a social media course!)

If he picked a niche and did a better job of positioning himself as an expert, he’d have had a lot of people calling him.

He approached me by claiming to be a distributor in my company… yet I never heard of him. You see I AM one of the top distributors in my company. I knew he was lying.

If he was telling the truth… If he was a top distributor in our company… He would have a lot of people asking him how he did it.  People would call him and ask to learn his secrets.

If you’d like to know more about finding your network marketing niche, and positioning yourself as an expert so prospects call  you first…. Join me for a free webinar, every Wednesday where I teach the basics of “Nichework Marketing”.

- Ben Fitts

MLM Training > social media marketing

Dear Readers,

Have you heard about Google+ yet?

Google “Plus” is Google’s latest attempt to create a social networking site to compete with Facebook.

Right now Google+ is in beta and access is by invitation only.  Google tried this before with Orkut but the service didn’t take off. (In fact when I joined Google+ I think a bunch of my data was pulled into my profile automatically because of my old Orkut account.)

In order to access Google+ you need to receive an invitation from a Google+ user.  You also have to hope that at that moment Google is accepting more users. They frequently throttle new users and turn them off for a bit to keep the service from being overwhelmed.

Google+ TIP: If you receive a Google+ invitation from someone and cannot use it because Google has turned off invites, just keep the email. Later on when Google allows invites you can click on the link in the email instead of having to wait for a new invitation from someone.

You may be asking what’s new about Google+? Why use Google+ instead of Facebook?

The main advantage to me appears to be what Google+ calls circles. Since we are social media savvy now we know that we want to break our friends into different groups. My mom may not want to read all my updates and I may not want my mom to read all my updates either   My business contacts might not want to read the updates that my high school friends read and so forth.

The advantage is that now that we’re starting over with a new social media site AND we have an easy way to identify groups of our friends… We can organize our contacts from the beginning.  This single advantage could be huge to Google+.  It isn’t that we can’t do that with Facebook but that now that we have hundreds (or thousands) of Facebook friends it is hard to go back and create groups.  Since we’re starting out with Google+ we can create groups at the beginning and use these “circles” from the get go. This means our Google+ account will be more organized than our Facebook account.

The reality is when Facebook began social media was still in it’s infancy.  When Facebook began they couldn’t imagine the success they would have. They couldn’t imagine that they’d have a membership base of approximately 700 MILLION people.

Google has the advantage of:

• Having attempted a social media site before with Orkut.
• Having been able to architect their new site with the advantage of experience.
• Having a built in userbase of 240+ million Gmail users to start with.

If Facebook could go back and architect everything over again I’m sure Facebook would be a lot better too!

So what does the Wall Street Journal think about Google+?  They just posted an article about how the effect of Google+ could impact the planned Facebook IPO. They suggest that Facebook has waited too long for their IPO and their reaction to Google+ may be too little too late.

Google+ Makes Facebook Look Socially Awkward from the Wall Street Journal Online.

A friend of mine and day trader suggests that the Facebook IPO will still be a hit. He’s probably right. I imagine that the general public isn’t even aware of Google+ yet. They won’t be aware that Google lost 6 million users in the USA and 1.5 million users in Canada in May.  The average user will buy Facebook stock anyway and savvy users will still buy Facebook stock knowing that the masses will drive up the value anyway!

What do you think about Google+?

Do you need a Google+ invite? If so leave a comment to let me know and I will try to email (to the email address you use when you comment) and I’ll send you an invite when they’re available.

- Ben Fitts

MLM Training > social media marketing

Dear readers,

I’m traveling this week so I’m not writing as much.

I did however want to share this with you.

12 Social Media Tools Recommended by the Pros

This article highlights a dozen social media marketing tools recommended by well known social media experts.  Check it out. I guarantee there will be some new tools on this list you’ve never heard of.

Have a great week (and to my Canadian friends, happy Canada Day!)

- Ben Fitts

MLM Training > social media marketing