Jonathan Gilliam – Social Media MLM Expert Interview

Jonathan Gilliam

Social Media Expert Jonathan Gilliam Shares Tips and Secrets for Networkers

Anyone in this business long enough understands the incredible need for marketing expertise — we are all marketers. Some are more sophisticated than others, especially on social media.

I recently interviewed Jonathan Gilliam, the rock star industry consultant and President of Momentum Factor LLC, a marketing firm for network marketing companies. Jonathan is President of Momentum Factor LLC, a renowned marketing & management consulting firm exclusively serving Direct Selling companies.

Jonathan has just released a new online training course, Social Media for Direct Selling in an attempt to educate the field in this complex area. – Ted Nuyten had the honour to interview Jonathan. In red Ted's questions:

Jonathan, what is the #1 thing a networker should know about social media?

That social media a new skill to learn. Unfortunately, a lot of folks have not transitioned their thinking from web marketing to social media. Social media is not a place to sell goods or market yourself. Rather it is a place to build and enhance relationships, and from there you earn permission to notify people about what you’re doing. It’s a different way of communicating.

What most networkers don’t know, for example, is when they promote and sell on Facebook rather than share and help, fewer people eventually ever even see the posts in their feeds — Facebook takes care of that for them by deeming their posts “irrelevant.” We’ve had people in our course who get pretty upset when they realize they have over-promoted to their community and lost the ability to reach them. That's hard to get back.

Be Active, Be Interesting on Facebook

 

So how should people market themselves if they can’t sell?

It’s just like in the real world. If you attend someone’s backyard cookout, do you set up a trade show booth? Of course not. You chat, talk about interesting things, make friends. You're authentic. Perhaps someone asks what you do for a living, and you share that. But you wouldn’t whip out a form and sign people up. Ok maybe some do! (laughs) 

Ok I get it. So just being there and making small talk helps?

Exactly. Social marketing is not “online marketing” which is a completely different discipline. Some people have a “click” mentality – that the more fans or friends the better. Not true at all. I’d rather have 100 engaged fans than 1,000 lurkers. In our new course, we teach people to become connectors, not collectors. They need to find common interests, listen, share and connect with folks.

Attendee Interviews Social Media Training

 

Think about the best social media users, what are they doing? Do they hawk products? Or do they entertain, inform and connect?

So what about platforms. Do we need to be on all of them to maximize our business?

A new social media platform is born every three days. Most die on the vine, but a few capture a lot of people very quickly. Pinterest is a good example of one that is taking off.  We also recently posted about Polyvore which is a new fashion-oriented network.

We teach you to choose the ones that work best for you and make them a primary tool in your arsenal. Some people live on Twitter and hardly ever check their Facebook page, others find LinkedIn or a well-done blog to be places they can build relationships.

Any last words of advice?

 

Social media is analogous to real life If you make it another channel to sell things you'll soon find no one really wants to hear that. If you make it a place to have fun and connect, great things can happen for your business as a nice side benefit. But do it for the right reasons, and get smart about it. Learn all you can and do it right. And ultimately I think people will find working it for their businesses to actually be fun.

If you are a network marketing professional, I recommend Jonathan’s social media course. It is well worth the price. Go here for more information. ~TN

Social Media for Direct Selling, quick look from inside the course

 

 

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