Everyone connected to the web has managed to build and maintain an online social network. With so many ways to connect, most people have all or most of their family and friends on one or more sites. Social networking is the most popular online activity. It has even beat search engine usage. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Digg provide a means for people to connect and share. With more and more people joining these websites, the online social media business is flourishing. With so many different sites being offered and people from across the world are able to share their daily life through them.

The popularity of these sites has led to social marketing. More and more people are trying to get out their adverts on these websites. Even if they don’t advertise there directly, they indirectly find ways to link these sites to them. For instance, they may have a blog that holds information on statistics or guides on making proper use of them. Blogs and websites have social media icons on them that users find very appealing to connect to. In some cases, these icons have options to “share” the information with friends on a particular website. Others indicate different places where they can be found. Thus, if a visitor belongs of the social networking site himself, he will probably find the icon impressive.

The best part about social media marketing is that it is totally free. All you need is internet access to get started. You can sign up for no charges at all and start reaching people from around the globe. This has also helped bridge the gap between companies and their customers. For instance, a company can have a Facebook page to interact with its consumers totally free of cost. Through such a page, the company can get feedback and introduce new products. The thing about social media sites is that information travels fast with so many people being online.

The social media network, being so widespread, acts as a good platform to help create awareness. Whatever your motive may be, you can always use social media sites to inform more people. These sites can also be used to raise charities. There are even websites targeted for kids that provide a safe online environment for them to play and interact with other kids. Some people think that being on social media sites is time consuming and useless. However, the truth is that it has become the most productive online activity. In fact, social media websites are time saving since they bring together people from all over the world. You can interact with them much easily online.

Once you have determined to enter the Multilevel Marketing arena, you will soon realize that leads are the heartbeat of your business. Without leads your business will fail. It’s that simple.

Some of the gurus say that you need to put up some money upfront and purchase leads. That is certainly an option but for the most part the leads that you purchase are usually not targeted for your business and can end up costing you anywhere from 5 cents a lead to 5 dollars a lead. The more expensive the lead, the more targeted they are to your opportunity.

Free MLM leads are just that. They are free of charge to you. The following are ways that are most useful in generating free MLM leads.

Before starting, you will need to have a website to drive traffic to. Probably the easiest way to create a website is to create a blog. There are many blog sites out there. The easiest way to find one is to type “blog sites” in the Google search engine and they will give you all kinds of places to put up a blog.

The best source, by far, is to create a blog using WordPress. If you use WordPress, you will also need a hosting account and a domain name. Go-daddy is a good place to obtain that. The cost is minimal. You will be required to pay around $90 – $100 dollars a year to have your domain name hosted on your website. The benefits to this method far out way the benefits of using a free blog site. However, if you want to do it for free, you can search Google and find a good site to place your opportunity. Blogger.com is a good place to start to drive free MLM leads to.

#1. Video Marketing. This is a very popular way and a very effective way to generate free mlm leads. Most people who spend much time on the internet have a webcam or maybe a video recorder in their home. With a little bit of practice you can make decent videos that people can see on websites such as YouTube, Flickr, Metacafe and many others. There are free video conversion programs that can be downloaded to your computer to convert videos that you have produced into formats that can be uploaded to YouTube or any of the other video sites.

While making the video you will want to promote your business opportunity and make sure in doing so you point them to your blog where they can see what you have to offer or promote. The more creative you are the better opportunity of driving them to your site.

#2. Article Marketing. This is my favorite way of generating free MLM leads. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of article directories out there on the internet. Most of them allow you to post articles that you have written on any subject imaginable for free. You can also place as many as you want and they even encourage you to post as many as you like.

Some of the directories are better than others depending on your business opportunity. You will need to spend some time and research that information. The best site and most accepted is ezinearticles.com. They go out of their way to make sure that your articles are formated right and have good content. If they accept your article you will have a better chance of ranking higher on the search engines.

#3. Social Marketing. Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and others are ways to create free MLM leads. I would recommend that you sign up for all of these but you focus on one. You will have a hard time at first keeping up with all that is required in all three of these sites to generate free leads. The idea with these social sites is to network with other like minded people and in doing so develop a relationship that can turn into a lead. Any of these sites can become addicting and therefore you will need to take caution not to spend too much time interacting and not enough time on your business goals. 30 minutes to an hour a day should be plenty of time to develop those relationships.

There are other ways to create free leads and ways to optimize your efforts. These three are a good start and will help you in your efforts to obtain free MLM leads.

Social Media Marketing Strategies – What You Need To Know

Like with running a marketing campaign elsewhere, you need to have a clear strategy when running a marketing campaign on social networking sites. Running a marketing campaign on social networking sites without a strategy will certainly not produce desired results. Ideally, it is the strategy that should drive your marketing campaign. Your strategy should be well thought out and be effective.

The first thing that you need to appreciate when it comes to setting your strategy is that it what will guide your marketing campaign on social networking sites. It is sort of a plan that shows you the correct path you need to follow in order to reach out to acquire as many business followers as possible in addition to driving social media users to your traditional business website. Failure to have a well thought out strategy in place simply means driving your campaign without any direction and you remain not sure on how your marketing campaign will end up.

The first step toward developing an effective social marketing strategy is in establishing your social media marketing objective. You simply will not be able to attain our marketing goal without establishing your goal. Note that your objective can be to generate new leads, increase number of followers on social networking sites, event promotion, attracting social media traffic to your traditional business website or promoting offerings.

A critical part of your marketing strategy should be to appreciate any effort (however small) your social media followers have made in sharing your marketing posts. It is very important that you employ an innovative way of appreciating your fans/followers for their effort. Use of analytic tools should allow you to ascertain successful conversions and amount of revenue you have generated.

Another critical part of your social marketing strategy should be how to measure your success. Unlike with other marketing channels, marketing on social networking sites is not for the purpose of making sales. This is so because marketing on social media sites is all about social networking. Social media users never visit the sites to shop for goods or services bit to connect with their friends. Your strategy should therefore aim at increasing awareness about your business or driving social media users to your traditional business website.

There are several ways through which you can effectively market your business on social media sites. A strategy you employ should be one that is not only cost effective but also very effective in yielding your desired results. You may need to appreciate the fact that developing an effective social marketing strategy can be a big challenge especially when yours is a small business. This is when the service of a social media marketing company becomes valuable. Although there are many such companies, you need to undertake careful search for the right company capable of developing an effective marketing strategy. Engaging the service of a company does not however mean leaving everything to the company. You need to work closely with a company you choose to engage in developing your strategy.