You may be asking yourself, why would I want to brand myself instead of the network marketing company I am involved with? No worries, we will be answering that question in this blog post. In short, people follow people, not their opportunities.
Why You Shouldn’t Advertise Your Network Marketing Opportunity
How many times have you scrolled down you page and been bombarded with network marketing opportunities? Daily I see post like, “I just lost 30 pounds with XX company, message me today and we can get you started with this AMAZING company.” Or, “I just made Diamond rank, you could be making $xxx/month, just ask me how.” Now those post all sound like great opportunities, but they can sometimes sound too good to be true. And when that happens, people just keep scrolling. With so many people involved in Network Marketing businesses these days, some people just scroll past any opportunity without even reading what you’ve wrote just because they see similar post all too often. So how do you stand out in a Facebook feed of similar post? You brand yourself instead. You market YOU.
Personal Branding: Focus on YOU
You may be thinking at this point, I’m just a regular person. Nothing special. How do I brand that? Why would I brand that? The answer is simple, YOU are unique and people will connect with you over the opportunity. Remember what I said earlier? People follow people, not their opportunities. This is so true. When you brand yourself, and you are authentic to who you are, you attract people that share common interest and that will work best with you. Here is a breakdown of a few things you can do to start the branding process:
- Create a Facebook Business Page featuring YOU, not your opportunity. You want to separate “business” from your personal Facebook page. You should rarely post anything about your business on your personal page, maybe 1 post per every 100 would be okay. Anything more and your friends and family are just going to feel annoyed. With a business page that brands you, you will be creating a community of people who support your business and people who have had success alongside of you. You can use this page to share news information from the general industry that your company is involved with and/or success stories that you or your team have. (Again try to exclude mentioning the company that you are involved with.) Your goal with this page is to rarely sell, but instead to brand yourself as an expert and a go-to source for information.
- Create a website. Again, this website will feature YOU, not your opportunity. The purpose of this website is to leverage you as an expert. Take the time to put information about yourself on your website. Again, people follow people, remember? Do you love to travel? Do you have kids? These are all things that people can connect with you on. Interest build relationships, and a business partnership can easily grow from there.
- All other social media: LinkedIn, Twitter, Google +, etc. Whatever social media platforms you want to use, make sure they are congruent with branding YOU. As you brand and market yourself, people will search for you all over the internet. They will check out all of your social media profiles, and they will read everything to learn as much about you as they can. This is why it is important for you to stick to the same type of “message” across all platforms. When people see consistency in you being described as a network marketing professional with numerous qualifications, they will start to believe the authority you are portraying and they will be interested in working with YOU, no matter what opportunity you are involved with.
This Isn’t What My Upline is Doing..
Your upline is probably telling you to slap the company logo on everything you post or write about so that you can gain instant credibility, since there is a history attached to that brand. Right? Well let’s think about that for a minute. When you are recruiting people with a focus on the credibility of the company, what prevents that person from working with another rep down the line? The company doesn’t care because they are still benefiting. When you promote the company, the only one benefiting is that company.
Say you find a much better opportunity down the road, how many people from your “downline” would trust you and follow you to this new opportunity, or would you find yourself starting over? This is just one example of why branding yourself is much more beneficial than branding the company/opportunity. Your upline won’t tell you this, because ultimately it’s benefiting you more than it’s benefiting the company. At the end of the day, you want yourself to succeed, not just the company you are working for. This is why you want the focus of the branding to be YOU. Get in that spotlight. Make your leads connect with YOU. Make them dying to work with YOU. When you have a following of people who look up to you, you will always be successful.
Certification: An Easy Way to Brand Yourself & Build Authority
This post isn’t intentionally meant to sell you anything. If you have read to this point and already have some ideas on how to brand yourself, skip this section and start building your website and social media pages. But for some people, they struggle with the confidence needed to brand themselves as an authority figure. Some people just don’t understand why people would want to look up to them, and for those people, we have created a “shortcut” per say. A tangible “look at me, I know what I’m talking about” piece of evidence that creates instant authority.
Yoobly is excited to offer a certification program that will certify you in 5 different core disciplines that you can earn and promote to grow your business. Once you complete each certification, you can use the badges you receive on your business cards, website, and on social media. These badges are instant authority builders, and they give you something tangible to show people that you DO know what you are talking about. These badges prove that you not only talk the talk, but you walk the walk as well. If you are interested in learning more about these certifications, you can watch the webinar replay here to get more info.
You Are The Goal for Success
Learning to stand behind your own personal brand is important. Think about how much time you invest into your business – and then think about who you want to benefit the most from that time commitment. Building a community of people who are interested in YOU is thinking ahead. It’s a smart business move not just for today, but for your future.