3 Common Facebook Profile Mistakes That Are Hurting Your Network Marketing Business
In this week’s article we’re going to talk about how to set your Facebook Profile up for success if you’re using this powerful social media platform to grow your business. If you’re using Facebook to network, inviting and enroll new people into your business there are several common mistakes you need to avoid if you want your profile to work FOR you rather than against you.
In every episode of the Freedom Factor I like to provide you with a powerful free resource to help you get more out of what we’re covering in the episode. Since this episode is covering the 3 most common Facebook Profile mistakes that are hurting your business, I thought it would be really cool to provide you with a checklist you can use to go through your own profile and make sure it’s set up professionally.
If you want your Facebook profile to work FOR you vs AGAINST you, there are a few key settings you need to have setup properly. This checklist will walk you through each one, step-by-step, so you can use your profile to get more engagement, sales and enrollments for your business.
And the best part is you can use this checklist and make the necessary changes in as little as 10 minutes!
You can access your free checklist by clicking on the image above, or simply click here.
Using Facebook to Grow Your Network Marketing Business
At the time of this recording I strongly believe there is no better platform out there to grow your network marketing business than Facebook. When I first started my business Facebook wasn’t even around yet. We were still back in the MySpace days and Social Media was a baby.
As an 18-year-old high school student with no network and no confidence, I knew I needed to spend a lot of time meeting new people and cultivating my networking and inviting skills if I wanted to grow a successful business. For this reason I spent the majority of my time, money and energy in the early years meeting new people — investing in expensive networking groups, renting booths at fairs and expos, going door-to-door and even handing out product samples in the mall.
At one point I even put thousands of flyers on apartment buildings around the local university and set up one-on-one coffee appointments with the students who responded to my flyers… showing them how starting a business during college could be infinitely more beneficial than simply working a minimum wage job.
Thankfully, social media is not a baby anymore. It’s a giant, actually. And we all have the opportunity to create a powerful presence on social media and use this giant to grow our business globally.
As great as this all is, using social media to grow businesses is still a relatively new art. And I see too many people out there making common mistakes that are HURTING their growth on social media. These mistakes can easily be avoided if you know what they are and understand what to do instead. So let’s jump in and get going:
Facebook Profile Mistake #1 | Basic Settings
Too many people out there are getting in their own way by not having the simple, basic settings of their Facebook Profile set up properly.
The Professional Facebook Profile Checklist is going to help walk you through all of these common mistakes, but I want to talk about a couple of them here: Accepting Friend Requests and Followers
Each week in our MLM Freedom Community on Facebook we give our members the opportunity to network with one another and add new friends. And each week I see a handful of people participating in this thread who don’t have their profile set up properly to accept friend requests or followers.
What does this mean?
People are trying to network and connect with them, and they literally can’t! There is no possible way to send that person a friend request or follow their profile.
Not good if you’re trying to grow your network, wouldn’t you agree?
Thankfully this can be rectified quickly with the click of a button in your Privacy Settings.
To enable Friend Requests:
Settings => Privacy => Who Can Send Me Friend Requests and select Everyone.
To enable followers:
Settings => Public Posts => Who Can Follow Me and select Public
To see the rest of the items on my list for how to set up your Facebook Profile Professionally, click here to download my Professional Facebook Profile Checklist.
Facebook Profile Mistake #2 | Using Your Facebook Profile Like an Infomercial
This common mistake is more like an epidemic. And it needs to stop NOW if we want to elevate our profession and continue to have network marketing viewed as a true business and not just a spammy “thing” all of our friends seem to be involved in.
Too many network marketers are out there treating their Facebook Profile like an infomercial:
Posting sales specials, asking people to join your team (you only have 5 spots available, after all!) and posting links to your website and sign up page expecting the sales and enrollments to just start rolling in.
Not only is this practice not helping your business, it’s actually HURTING it. Here’s why:
First of all, no one likes to be sold (but people love to buy!) —
By constantly posting about sales, promotions and sign-up specials you are constantly SELLING to your audience. And I use that word lightly because if you continue to post in this manner you won’t have an audience for much longer.
That sounds harsh, but I can say this with confidence because this is the exact same social media posting strategy I used to use. As a results, my likes/comments (even on my non-business posts) went down the toilet, and I had friends telling me they’d actually HIDDEN me on social media because my posts had become so annoying.
Second, the Facebook algorithm doesn’t like it —
Love it or hate it, we all need to play nice with the Facebook algorithm. If you’re not sure that is, the simple version is the algorithm is Facebook’s way of determining which posts get seen by which people… and how much and how long your posts remain displayed in the newsfeed.
While we’ll never completely understand how it works, many marketers have noticed some recent changes to the algorithm that we should all take note of.
One change in particular is that Facebook has really started to pay attention to the likes/comments each new post receives when it first gets published. If the response is positive (lots of engagement), Facebook then shows the post to a few more of your Facebook friends. If that response is positive, it spirals out even more… and so on and so on.
For this reason it’s more important than ever to post high quality content that your audience is going to enjoy and want to interact with.
Finally, it turns a lot of people off —
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told, “I could never do a home business because I don’t want to spam all my friends on social media like that.”
Ouch. Right?
When you’re talking to a prospect, 2 questions immediately pop into their head and remain there until they make a decision. If the answer to either question is no, you’re going to get a big RED light. You want the answer to be yes.
Want to know what the questions are?
Can I do this?
Would I want to do this?
And if you’re posting spammy photos and links all over your Facebook profile most people simply don’t want to do it.
Instead, learn how to market your business the RIGHT way on Facebook in way that grabs your audience’s attention, gives them value and entertainment, and leaves them thinking about how fun and simple building a business on social media can really be.
Facebook Profile Mistake #3 | Spammy Messages and Adding People to Groups Without Permission
Have you ever been at the mall and had one of those hand cream salesmen from the kiosk in the middle come up and try to put lotion on you as you’re walking by?
I don’t know about you, but I keep an eye for those kiosks and make sure to walk far on the other side of the aisle when I pass by. Even then, they shout their sales pitch from 15 feet away.
I don’t blame the guys… after all, they’re simply doing what they were trained to do. And hey, it obviously works on some level because the kiosk in our local mall has been there FOREVER.
But even if it does work, it’s annoying and intrusive… right?
You’re not there to buy hand cream. And yet there they are… trying to cover you in the stuff as you walk by.
Sending spammy messages and adding people to your groups without permission is the social media equivalent to pushy hand cream kiosks.
No one likes it. It’s spammy. And people will start going out of their way to avoid you!
Of course, I don’t want to tell you what NOT to do without offering a suitable alternative that works, so here it is:
Network. Have a conversation. Meet new people simply for the sake of meeting them… then, if and ONLY if you determine through your conversation that there might be a need your products or services can fill… make a note.
Circle back to that person 48 hours later and say something like, “Hey Mary… I was thinking about our conversation the other day and remember you said you wish you had more time to spend with your kids this summer. It may or may not be for you, but I recently partnered with a company that’s allowed a lot of Mom’s to replace their full-time income by working just a few hours a week from home. If I sent you some information on it would you be open to taking a look?”
It’s so simple… so effective! And yet most people are still out there adding people to their groups without asking, and sending product links and sign-up specials without so much as a hello first.
And it’s killing their business!
Again, remember your prospects are always asking: Could I do this? Would I WANT to do this?
No one likes receiving spammy messages… no one likes being added to groups without an invitation first…
Instead, prospect in a way that’s simple and fun and actually puts the other persons’ interests first!
Try it, I promise you’ll love it!
Be a Professional on Social Media | Bringing It All Together
When it comes to building your business on social media there are 2 main things you want to make sure you have in order:
First is how your profile is set up — you want to make sure your settings, profile and cover photo and bio are all set up properly to help give you a professional edge and generate interest from your prospects.
The Professional Facebook Profile Checklist I created for you will help with all of that — walking you through exactly which settings you need to make sure you have configured correctly, along with my top tips for setting up your profile and cover photo, bio, occupation, etc.
You can download your free copy of the download here.
The second thing you want to make sure you have in order is your own BEHAVIOR on social media!
Are your posts, messages and invites generating curiosity, or are they turning your prospects off? Are they making MORE people want to follow you and see what you’re up to? Or do they have people walking across the aisle to avoid making eye contact?
Keep these two things in order and before long you’ll be growing your business on social media like a pro!
Additional Resources That Will Help You
The Simple Routine to Help You Enroll People Every Week Online Without Bugging Friends Family –Learn More
This powerful webinar my Mom and I share our simple 4-Step Online Prospecting and Team Building Blueprint we used to create a 6-figure business to help you build a huge team online and enroll people every week without bugging your friends and family.
Secrets from Growing Up MLM – Learn More
My Mom became a network marketing professional when I was just 10 years old, and I joined the network marketing industry when I was 18 as a senior in high school! Over the years I’ve learned a lot of lessons I wish I’d known when I first got started, and I share them all with you here in this eBook!
MLM Freedom Community – Learn More
Come join the fastest growing community of driven network marketers inside our MLM Freedom Community on Facebook! This free community provides incredible networking opportunities, exclusive free training, and a supportive and encouraging environment to help you grow your business and have a ton of fun along the way!
Did you get some value out of this article?
I sure hope so, because I put my heart and soul into sharing my best practices for what is an isn’t working in my network marketing business so you can get better results and reach your own network marketing goals.
If you love sharing valuable info (and really, who doesn’t!?), please feel free to share this post!
Each week I put out incredible free content here on my blog an across my social media channels.
Each week my business partner and I do LIVE free training on our Facebook Page, diving deeper into one of the topics you just read about… so make sure we are connected there.
http://www.Facebook.com/MLMBossBabes
And for daily inspiration exclusive training opportunities join us inside our MLM Freedom Community — the fastest growing community for network marketers to network, collaborate and grow their business on Facebook.
Create a Great Day!
Jordan Maylea
