Online MLM Strategy - Have a Home Base and Media Outposts

Have a Home Base and Media Outposts

This is part of the series An Online MLM Marketing Roadmap.

Promoting your MLM business online can be confusing for the beginner so having a clearly mapped strategy can really help clear things up. One way that I’ve found that helps me clarify my online MLM strategy is to think about it this way:

I have an online home base and I have multiple online media outposts.

Online MLM Home Base
When you market your MLM business online, you have to have a home base or headquarters where you can post all the pertinent details about your business. For most people, the online home base is either a website or a blog, or both. You need an online home base because you need a place where you can send prospects and customers to get more information about your company, your products, or your opportunity. Having a home base gives your business a sense of solidity and credibility, the same way a bricks-and-mortar storefront does for a business in the real world.

If you choose your website to be your home base, post information about your MLM’s products and opportunity to the website. Be sure to include product descriptions and benefits, your company’s compensation plan, and any unique features about the way you work your business. You may also want to include informational articles relevant to your products and resources for business building.

If you choose to use your blog as your online MLM home base, you can post tips relevant to your niche. For instance, if your business is a nutritional MLM you may want to post health and nutrition tips, and mention your company’s products in some of your posts. You may also want to write business-type posts that discuss, either directly or indirectly, the merits of an MLM business. A blog is also a great place to introduce yourself to prospects. You can share more personal facts about your life on a blog, including your hobbies and interests, plus introduce prospects to other members of your team. If you do use your blog as your online MLM home base, I suggest including links to a company-sponsored website that has product, business, and compensation information. These company website generally are not adequate by themselves as a home base, but do great when paired with a blog.

Online MLM Media Outposts: Spokes on the Wheel
Once you’ve established a solid online headquarters with your website or blog, the next step is to spread the word about your business and products using media outposts. A “media outpost,” a term I borrowed from Chris Brogan, is simply an outlying online location where you promote your business or products. Examples of media outposts include:

- article directories
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Digg
- YouTube
- Delicious
- Ryze
- MLM and small business forums

The list is endless and you’ll need to choose the media outposts that are appropriate and specific to your niche, but you get the point. Media outposts are places where you can engage with others in conversation and, if the interest is there, share a little about your business or product. You don’t hit people over the head with your business at media outposts. Instead, you share your knowledge and expertise, and direct people who are attracted by what you share to your home base website or blog.

Think of media outposts as the spokes on a wheel, which makes your home base the hub of the wheel. You visit your media outposts on a regular basis and talk with people, just like you might talk to prospects offline. You share information by posting articles to article directories, chatting with people on Twitter, helping people solve problems on forums, and digging interesting stuff on Digg. Generate enough useful and helpful information and soon people will start considering you an expert. Not only will they come to you for advice, but you will become known as the “go to” person for anyone wanting to start a home-based business.

The Big Picture
The idea have having an online MLM home base and multiple media outposts is meant to give you a big picture strategy of doing your MLM business online. Obviously there are hundreds of details that have to be considered when you implement this strategy, but hopefully the “hub and spoke” wheel analogy gives you an overall blueprint from which you can build your online MLM presence.

Make sense? If not, what can I help clarify for you?

Photo credit: Spokes on a Wagon Wheel

Tagged as: media outposts, online MLM, online mlm marketing for beginners