Today I'm going to go over some of the specifics you need to think about if you are going to use instant messenger for your marketing.
Screen Name: This is the first important decision you will need to make. You want to choose a screen name that is interesting and unique. You want your name to have meaning to you, but not necessarily be related to your product or service. When I chose my username at Yahoo I chose AbundanceCoach2006. I am an abundance coach ~ but most people don't really know what that is, so they ask, "hey what's an abundance coach?" This allows an opening for me to talk about coaching and abundance. The 2006 was special to me, abundance coach was taken, I already had the intention to be able to leave my J-O-B and be working from home by the year 2006, that's why I chose that number. Turns out in April of 2006 I left my job and have been working from home since. ;) (you gotta love the power of intention)
Your Profile: Your profile is a huge element of this system. When you create your profile you want to talk about YOU, really fill in your profile, fill it all out, and don't write about your business. In fact, I would not even put my company site as the homepage they allow you to have. If you have a blog or a page on a social community I would put that instead. This allows people to get to know YOU better. It also lets people know you are a real person. They are much more likely to listen and converse with a person than someone they perceive is out to sell them something or get them to join a business.
This happened to me today as a matter of fact. I had someone instant message me. I immediately went to her profile which was barely filled in, and her website was a turnkey work at home business site.
Funny thing ~ being the smart-alec that I am I asked her if she had read my blog on instant message marketing this month and gave her the link. lol. We did converse briefly, but I probably wasn't the best contact she's ever made.
Your Personal Quote: Most instant message programs whether it's yahoo or myspace give you the space to add a personal quote. This is very important. You can tell just about everything about a person from the quote they choose. Think about this ~ which of these two people would you rather approach someone with the quote " Eighty Percent of success is just showing up" or "Life is a highway and I'm always stuck in traffic" Which do you think is going to be open to learning new things and willing to put in the work to make it happen? I think you already know.
Your Introduction: This brings me to the next point. How you introduce yourself to this person you are instant messaging. Max Steingart does this amazingly well, so make sure you read Mary K's post with the Max Steingart article. You want to say hello and bring up something about them. You want to get the talking about themselves so you can see just how they will fit in with what you have to offer ~ if they even need it. So ask questions. If you are looking for teachers you might say "I notice you are a teacher, how long have you been teaching or what do you teach". Know that people will look at your profile to see what your online agenda is. If you profile smells of selling they will not respond.
From your introduction you will want to continue the conversation, hopefully moving it in the direction where they will ask you what you do.
Don't give it all away: This is the next big thing. You don't want to vomit your business speech all over them just because they asked you what you do. You want to give them an idea and let them ask the questions for more information. Max does this quite well in the Instant Message Marketing article Mary K posted.
From here you should be able to tell if they are interested, if you are doing affiliate marketing you can recommend the product or tell them how it's worked for you. You can shoot them a link to the website ~ it needs to be a cloaked link so it doesn't immediately appear as an affiliate link. I showed the readers of my Internet Marketing for Mommies a great way to cloak affiliate links using subdomains if you already have hosting and a domain name.
If you are doing network marketing or trying to talk to them about a company you can get them on the phone or to your company call from this point.
Remember ~ this is about being social, it's about helping people, it's about getting to know people.
You have to go into this system with that intention or people will smell salesman on you and just won't respond or will leave the conversation very quickly.
More and more people are relying on friends (both online and off) for recommendations and are MUCH less likely to respond to any kind of sales pitch. Remember to be a friend helping out another friend and you'll do well.
I'd love for you all to try this system out and come back and let me know how it went. If this sounds like the perfect marketing method for you check out Max's website, his products really will teach you everything you need to know about being an expert Instant message marketer. (no affiliate link there ~ just solid recommendation)
See ya next week.
Jackie Lee
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