Attention Grabbers!!

If a complete stranger came and knocked on your front door and demanded that you go with them to look at their new car or dragged you out of your house and forced you to go inside their new shop, don't you think you might get a bit upset. Why is it then that so many people act that way on facebook

Why should I give you my attention?

How many times have you had someone send you a friend request on Facebook and then straight away before you've had time to take a second breath they have asked you for something, demanding your atention, whether its to check out their group, look at their website, join their MLM program or Get rich Quick scheme. What these people maybe fail to realise is their approach is getting them entirely the opposite results than they might expect. The reason being is they fail to see the message they are sending from the other side or think a little bit about who they are sending to. Without having this view you assume that the whole world will naturally be interested in everything you are doing and you demand that they give you attention.

Relationships first - deals second

Trying to sell yourself or your products without first taking the time to build some sort of relationship is not going to be the most effective strategy in today's web 2.0 world.

Serve others first and you will be rewarded

When you friend someone don’t ask them for something straight away, take the time to send a personal message and ask what you can do to help them. If you want to get your self really noticed then you are going to have to learn to give before you receive. This will instantly set you apart from everyone else and will show that you are actually interested in them and not just in serving yourself or your business. Serving others is one of the highest virtues you can adopt and is one of the quickest ways to have your own needs met as well. People will always remember you in a positive light and that is what can influence them to open your emails, listen to your sales messages and buy your products or services in the future. Attention is one of the most valuable commodities that all businesses are competing for.

Don't be too aggressive

Once you have their attention and you have started a conversation you can decide if you want to mention what It is you are promoting. If you are too aggressive in your marketing or sales approach you can turn people off very quickly It's easy to spot people who are not genuine so be very careful here and make sure you do this in a skilful way, a casual mention of what you have to offer can be much more powerful than the direct approach. People hate being sold to but they do like to buy. If you position yourself in the right way, you can be the person they choose to go to when they are ready.

Consider Starting you own group

If you want to get a targeted group of people all in one place then consider forming your own group, you can invite all your friends and in this way, only the people who are interested will be subjected to your marketing messages and they have the option of leaving the group at any time. Selling directly to new friends via their profile, instant messenger or wall is one of the quickest ways to start losing friends and as spam becomes more widespread more people are becoming less tolerant of unsolicited messages in their inbox.

I join a lot of groups to see what they have to offer, one thing I have noticed is the difference between how some of the group leaders treat their members.

The Trusted Friend

Some Facebook groups send me a continual stream of messages promoting this product or that service, I have to admit that I tend to ignore most of them, Its like I almost don't see or hear anything of what they are communicating, I filter it out and it just goes in the noise and distraction file. There are however a few group leaders who have adopted a different strategy, they keep sending me useful information and good links to things I am interested in, and they have a totally different way of communicating. It's not that they never try and sell me something its just they do it in a different way so I don't mind because I have placed them in a different file, that of the trusted friend. If you are networking, planning on using facebook to promote your business or you would like to start your own Facebook group in the future, I think there is an important lesson to learn here.

Share a Part of Your Life

Take Travis Greenlee as a good example, he was the person who inspired me to start the Facebook Made Easy group, His videos impressed me so much that I wanted to share them with as many people as possible. He has carefully positioned himself as a thought leader, and highly respected businessman here on Facebook, a person to look up to and one who sets the standards for others to follow. Notice how he is also sharing a part of his personal life too, uploading his home videos. This is a great relationship building strategy and allows you to connect in a way that you could never do personally to so many people.

Another person who always sends interesting content is Russell Birtwistle, He runs his business from Thailand , I look forward to his network marketing group emails because he shares a lot and tries to educate you to understand how he approaches his business and what tools he uses to stay successful and to stand out from the rest of the crowd. Just today he sent an enticing email describing his lifestyle and his love of fine food and golf. This style of marketing is very effective, how many people do you think there are who would like to trade places and live a similar life in paradise. These are all his potential customers who are being reeled in by his interesting stories, his direct honesty and transparent openness.

Another Facebook Leader who I admire is the copywriterr Jim Turner. Last week I was reading an article in his blog , Pit Bull Marketing where here he was talking about these same issues. I asked Jim if I could quote directly from his article and he agreed

"First off, your group or JV opportunity has to be focused on something that I’m interested in. If you can’t get past that hurdle, forget it! "

"People in general are very self-centred. So when you put together your pitches or group invitations you need to make sure you let the reader know what’s in it for them… and it has to be believable.

Once you get me in your group – the real work starts. You see, now you’ve got to keep me there. The best way to do that is keep feeding me information that I can use and benefit from… not more and more pitches."

"I would like to hear from you no more than a couple of times per week. Anything above that and you run the risk of annoying your members. Annoyed members hit the remove link real fast."

"it’s important that you know that I’m not against offering a product or service to me or your group members. I realize most of us are in business – that means that at some point a financial transaction must take place, or we won’t be around very long.

But be willing to provide training and educational resources pertaining to how to be successful with what you’re promoting."

To read the whole article you can follow this link - or you can joins Jims group Social Media Marketing Mastermind

Don't be a Spammer

So remember don't keep messaging your group 3 times a day. Most people find it annoying and if you are not giving any value or content and only self promoting what you are doing is Spam and not only will Facebook flag your account and send you a warning but you will also damage your reputation with all your friends. Spend the time to develop relationships with your group and your friends. Be respectful, these are real people so treat them that way.

Build Solid Foundations

Don't think of Facebook and social networking only as a way to make a quick buck. Think about it as a long term business strategy , lay the foundations in the right way and you will have people visiting your house every day. Ignore this vital stage and whatever you build will likely come crashing down around you and all your hard work wasted.

Why using Exit Viral Marketing Techniques might Seriously Harm your Business

READ THIS ARTICLE ALL THE WAY THROUGH BEFORE YOU SIGN UP FOR VIRAL TRAFFIC EXPLOSION …. It Might Save you a lot of Money and your Reputation.

As I am slowly becoming an expert in viral marketing techniques I thought it only wise to warn a few people of the dangers of joining certain groups like viral traffic explosion on facebook , or anyone who wants you to join a website chain letter based at exitexplosion.com or other similar schemes. While I do not know the actual details of the techniques I believe they work something like this, You add a piece of code to your website, and then submit your URL to the organizers who will then place your website at the bottom of a list of other websites similar to a standard chain letter. The one at the top of the list is removed and then it is up to you to recruit others below you to feed the viral chain. Anyone who has followed 6 degrees of separation will see that if others below you do the same then you are likely to get a lot of traffic to your site by the time you get to the top of the list.

VIRTUAL HIJACK

In the meanwhile everyone who leaves your own website will be getting redirected to somewhere else, you are effectively agreeing to a virtual Hijack. This will almost certainly piss off your customers and put them off from ever returning to your site

While I have nothing against the organizers of these groups ( Isuspect they are just a bit naïve) , I feel it is my duty to warn others of the danger to their business reputation and the harm it might do to their website if they follow any schemes such as this.

Having a pop-up on exit code on your site is a very touchy matter. Many people dislike it, many people have popup blockers that will block it, and the scripts that handle it can't differentiate between someone who opened and then closed a new window to view one page of your site, from someone who actually left the site.

LONG TERM DAMAGE

I would like you to look a bit further into the long term possible effects. I hope by now you realise that in your short term greed you might be damaging your long term future. How long do you think it will be before Google decides to black list all websites on which this code is installed. If you have a business or hope to have a business in the future, do you think it can survive and compete successfully if you suddenly find your self wiped from the SERPS and having to pay for all your traffic, months or even years of work can be erased overnight. Google have done similar things in the past , having this code on your sites will be a flag to all the googlebots that you are a spammer . It also wont take long for someone to invent an exit popup blocker that disables Java script and the cookie cache to prevent this method from working anyway, no matter if the organisers tell you its unblockable.

What will your customers think of your business if each time they come to your site they get high jacked and forced to go somewhere they don't want to.

PROTECT YOURSELF

I can see precisely how this kind of chain letter works on a structural level. I would also like you to think clearly how you plan to use such unfocussed and random traffic is it even going to convert for you. Not withstanding the social implications and the harm that might result, always ask yourself does doing this add any value to the Web. If you do decide to join these schemes, I would strongly urge you to protect yourself by setting up a separate redirect domain on a different hosting than your money site, so if you do get banned then you will only lose a pawn and not your king or queen. But there is no guarantee, remember google hires the top brains in the whole world. Do you really think you can outsmart them?

VIRTUAL SMART AGENT

Another option to consider if you are determined to use exit popups is to get a package like virtual smart agent, at least that type of pop up will add some value to your business and might not piss your customers off so much. While you won't be harnessing the power of Viral marketing and be getting huge amounts of free traffic, you might be building a more stable long term business and developing real lasting relationships with your customers.

What I hate about so many of these Network Marketing Schemes is that so many unsuspecting people fall prey to their greed and never work out the mathematics or know who is really behind these schemes. Its pretty easy to create a fake profile and a fancy looking website. If you think you areever going to be the spider in the centre of the web, think again you will only ever be the fly caught in the trap, being slowly sucked dry. The real winners are the shady organisers of these schemes who dupe otherwise respectable people into spreading their message to their friends while they are monetising their free traffic by selling spaces on their lists to Viagra Sellers, Internet Porn companies and other Spam "Get Rich Quick" schemes.

Please feel free to copy this article and share to all your friends so they are fully informed of the potential dangers should they ever feel tempted.