Web 2.0 Plus Network Marketing Equals MLM Success

Chances are good that if you've been running in network marketing circles, you've caught a glimpse of what can happen when someone falls victim to old-style MLM strategies. Trusting people are sent forth into the world with nothing but the dream of success, a list of names and a few key phrases to be thrown out at cocktail parties. The problem with that strategy is that it rarely garners real success, and certainly not the kind of success that is all too often promised to those who are sent forth to make it happen.

You've probably also learned the cautionary tale from those who purchased a list of leads and pounded the pavement practicing their best cold-calling approach. That approach doesn't work either. The only people who get rich with that approach are the companies selling the leads and the rare few who can make cold-calling work.

Fast-forward to the 21st century. Network marketing is a whole different animal now, thanks to the Internet and Web 2.0. You no longer need to rely on television, radio or the print media to craft an effective marketing campaign. You can drive people to you with social Web 2.0 marketing, all for relatively little effort and no specialized tech skills.

Web 2.0 marketing makes it possible for the average person to learn and implement marketing strategies that work. Web 2.0 allows you to have a real business with real prospects and real clients who knock on your door, not the other way around. What's more, Web 2.0 allows you to generate cash flow from a multitude of sources while attracting the big spenders to the higher ticket items you are peddling.

Web 2.0, or social marketing, is where users can interact with the content on the Web, such as by creating blogs and Web pages, posting articles and videos (think YouTube) and provide an almost endless variety of content to an infinite number of Web users. In essence, it's an easy way to get your business seen online.

There are six basic aspects of social marketing: content sharing sites, bookmarking sites, social sites, videos, blogs and articles. Taken together, these areas can create a social marketing network within the Internet aimed at attracting search engine giants like Google. This is known as attraction marketing.

Even if you aren't proficient in all of these aspects of social marketing, you can be successful at attraction marketing. There is no need to use each area. With that being said, however, the more links you can create between your articles, websites and blogs and other sites and blogs, the greater your web presence will be. A great presence translates into a greater possibility for business success. Remember: The goal of attraction marketing is to draw attention to you. Think of it as the opposite of cold-calling.

Social networking online is the new way of doing business. Sure, you can still whip out a business card if you happen upon a potential lead in the grocery store, but chances are good that you'll need a lot fewer business cards if you think, plan and execute a social networking plan carefully and aggressively. Web 2.0 has changed the way we network with one another and, as a result, the way in which we do business. Through attraction marketing, potential leads will now be knocking at your door, in search of information about what you are selling. The pavement will just have to go unpounded, you can put down the phone, and you'll never have to spend another dime on a list of leads that will only prove fruitless. Through attraction marketing and social networking, the whole paradigm of marketing has shifted. Fortunately, it has shifted in favor of the marketer, not the consumer.