You can’t scroll through a social media feed these days without bumping into a few network marketers. If they’re not already on your friends list, their carefully targeted ads will pop up in your feed every few posts. Social media marketing is an awesome tool and should definitely be a part of any content marketing strategy for network marketers, or any other marketer, but only a small part.

Disclosure: Links in this post (and anywhere on The Savvy Solopreneur) may be affiliate links. Find out what that means here.

If you’re one of the many network marketers or affiliate marketers out there,  or anyone else trying to market a product or service online, you probably need your own blog or website. Here are a few things you can do on a blog that you can’t on social media.

Own Your Audience

You don’t  own your social media profiles or pages. Facebook owns your fan page, and by extension your fans. Twitter owns your profile, and by extension your following.

New rules and algorithms mean you can lose your reach on social media overnight. Facebook has been particularly hard on some network marketers. An inadvertent breach of terms can get your page or profile shut down without notice. Setting up your own blog or website, on your own domain name, gives you a lot more control.

Shift Your Readers Mindset

People are on social media to be social, not to be sold to. They’re chatting, liking, posting and commenting. But as soon as they click away to read a blog post, they’re moving into a slightly different mindset.

Now they’re in ‘interested in the topic’ or ‘gathering information’ mode. This mode is one step closer to making a purchase. If someone is looking for information on a topic, they may be looking for a solution to a problem. Everyone loves a free solution, of course, but most people are willing to pay for one from time to time, too. If people are actively looking for a solution, they’re moving closer to buying a product or service that might provide it.

Pre-sell your offerings or opportunity

When you’re selling on social you don’t have a lot of space. 140 characters on Twitter. No more than a few lines on most other platforms (before people realize they’re being sold to and lose interest).

With a blog post or article you have a chance to pre-sell what you have to offer. Pre-selling is when you warm people up to an idea. Yes, they would like to lose weight, clean their home with green products, or improve their health and wellness easily. These tips you’re offering are great. Maybe they’ll try some. And oh look, a recommendation for a reasonably priced product that will help. Maybe they’ll click through and buy that.

If what you’re marketing is a high quality product with a good sales page, your job is to pre-sell (get your readers thinking about the idea) and then send them over there.

Build an email list

You can do this on social, of course. Major email providers like Mailchimp and Aweber allow you to get sign-ups straight from your Facebook page or put a link anywhere on social media.  And most network marketers, bloggers and solopreneurs do, but again, most people aren’t on social media looking to sign up to an email list.

A blog makes it easier. People are on your blog actively consuming information, so when you offer them more information by email they’re more likely to sign up. And when you have someone’s email address, you have a much more direct and personal connection with them.

Move from selling and advertising to content marketing

Content marketing is what you’re doing when you produce really valuable, in-depth content that also happens to market your offerings. Content marketing can be way more effective than paid advertising. It’s also more time consuming, but usually cheaper in the long run, in terms of return on investment.

When you offer great content for free, you build trust and relationships, making readers more inclined to buy from you. The content you post on social media is part of your content marketing strategy, but it’s hard to offer the level of content there that you can on your own blog or site.

Diversify the products and services you offer

Have you seen those network marketers who jump from one opportunity to another and keep pushing the latest one on Facebook? How do you feel about that? It kind of looks like they just want to make money from selling stuff, doesn’t it? And if they were selling one thing last week and now they’ve jumped to another it means the other opportunity sucked, right? Or maybe they just didn’t make enough money from it so they’ve switched to something else. They have no real loyalty or commitment to anything they recommend, and they don’t know what works, any more than you do. None of these conclusions make you trust that person or their current opportunity.

On a blog, though? You can easily recommend lots of different products, either in different posts, or in one focused post, as alternatives to the same problem. It doesn’t make you look flaky. It makes you look informed, and balanced. You’ve done your research. You’re offering different options, that may suit different readers. You’re NOT just pushing your product. You’re making product suggestions. Representing more than one company as an affiliate or network marketer makes you look more knowledgeable and experienced on a blog, but flaky and money grabbing on social media.

Look at this post I recently wrote on PLR content. I recommend a few different places to buy your PLR. That’s fine. I’m offering readers variety and choice. They can buy from any, all or none of those companies. I happen to be an affiliate for all of them. I’ve bought from all of them in the past, according to what my needs were at the time. If my readers buy from any of them, I get a commission. Blogging gives you a whole range of possibilities for promoting different opportunities and products.

Worried that starting a blog is hard? Or expensive? It’s not. Find out how to get one set up in the next ten minutes here.

Don’t know the first thing about creating content? I recommend this highly affordable content creation program Buzz Monthly, for ideas, content prompts and content creation tips. Check it out here. (Yep, that’s an affiliate link. Yep, I really do love that program.)

Have any questions about starting your own blog, or content marketing in general? Ask them in the comments.

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