I’ve always taken a more cautious approach when it comes to implementing technology, like static web pages vs blogging software etc…

Social media is not really anything new, blogs, instant messengers, have been around for a while now. They allowed people to interact with each other long before twitter and facebook really took hold.

Twitter has turned into a literal cesspool if you’re a network marketer. All you have to do to get someone (I mean something) to follow you is mention, network marketing or MLM.

There is nothing social about it, no interaction just endless pitches. So when Google’s Buzz came along at first I was skeptical.

Yet, Buzz functions more like facebook in that it does allow interaction, isn’t that what social media is supposed to be about.

Twitter was touted as a micro-blog and some do use it this way. But, I think Buzz has it beat by a long shot. It’s kind of scary, it could actually be used almost as a blog.

In my opinion, which many will disagree with Twitters downfall will come from the automated tools it allows. No one wants to watch a twenty-four hour, seven day a week pitch channel.

Twitter is still useful, but you have to carefully screen everyone before following them. It’s not hard just look at their profile over the past few days…

…If you see repeated tweets, the same canned messages, well it’s up to you if you want to look at it.

If you are looking to interact with people in an electronic environment then Google Buzz maybe more of what your looking for.

And, as the the technology advance I’m sure there will be modules that will sync Buzz and blog comments together, that would truly make it a killer application.

Does this mean I’ll give up Twitter? Not at all! I still have people there I like to follow. And, every now and then something news worthy comes along.

Since I actually still talk to people struggling with their network marketing businesses everyday, there are a few things that surface during these discussions.

Since the beginning of this recession, many companies and network marketers have seen a decline revenue coming in. People are a little more skeptical each day.

Companies have chased each others product lines, jumping on the juice wagon. For example and ignoring their products that have produced the bulk of their income for years, even decades.

This has led many network marketers to begin to question their companies and up-lines as well. Sometimes rightfully so!

Couple that with advertisements in the past and still out there today designed to capitalize on this and plant seeds of doubt that there is a better way.

Recently, I was having a conversation with a six figure network marketer that has seen a decrease in the organization (downline) size and along with it the income.

The company had great products, and had ventured into the juice wars which the individual felt was not as productive as the core products they offered.

At this point the individual was mulling over switching to a new company and starting over again. It happens I’ve been there before myself.

And, there is nothing wrong with being in more than one company! Just so long as you know how to promote them! Don’t throw everything at the prospect and hope that something sticks.

Yet, during our conversation we discovered where the changes had really occurred; the benefits the company had to offer.

Just because a company brings out a new product does not really mean you have to drop the other products to promote the new one!

This is where tracking comes into play, something that every successful business does. Companies that we represent will always make changes…

…And we may not like these changes. But, don’t fall pray to the idea that your company and / or up-line are lying to you.

If you’re successful in offline marketing don’t trade it for online marketing until you’ve proven it to yourself that it can be done.

If you are good at working through your warm market, teach those in your organization how to do the same with theirs. Don’t just let them go at it blindly.

Successful marketers combine all aspects today, online, offline, warm market, social media, but they do it all in balanced way. They know how to track and determine where they are successful.

And, if your still struggling with your network marketing company there is help out there today. Just be careful who you choose as many are designed solely to recruit you.

When it comes to finding the best network marketing training to ensure your success where do you begin? This is something I’ve written about quite often.

And, finding it is not always easy. Today everyone is branding themselves as a the best to the point that it is almost obnoxious.

To succeed in any business venture you really have to take a balanced approach to marketing. Never discount anything until it has been proven not to work by you, not someone else’s opinion.

If you see an advertisement that starts with…

Why are they advertising next to a company that has been teaching network marketers how to achieve success for 16 years?

Why is it that one company will give you a full disclosure that shows realistic expectations, while the others if you read it out loud…

… Or better yet have one of your friends or family members read it out loud to you will leave you scratching your head saying “Wow that’s an outright SCAM!”

Finding the best network marketing success training is really easy if you knew where to look!

After all there are really no secrets, that is just a marketing ploy to separate you from your money. Read the fine print, then decide!

I find it kind of ironic that individuals promoting and utilizing social media to advance their network marketing business have taken the social out of it.

If you look at the definition of social one aspect is: “relating to or designed for activities in which people meet each other for pleasure!”

In network marketing this could mean “hotel meetings, home parties etc…” Today most individuals believe this means Twitter, Facebook, Linked in etc…

While each of these new methods does bring a method to stay connected to people all around the globe, some of these have become antisocial.

If you’re involved on Twitter and network marketing you know what I mean. It’s like turning on a 24/7 shopping channel. There is very little social activity at all.

Web 2.0 and beyond was designed to bring interaction between the content creator and the visitor.

Twitter was touted as a micro-blog and some do use it in this fashion, while most network marketers use it simply as a broadcast tool.

They accomplish this by plugging into automated tools that auto-follow and auto-tweet for them. Taking the social part out of it.

Google got a lot of flack, when they first released Google Buzz, and rightfully so.

But, Google Buzz (my profile) in my opinion will do a much better job of putting the social back into web 2.0 than twitter ever will.

With Buzz you can pull in your various feeds from your sites as I have done, placing everything in one location.

Individuals are already commenting on how Google Buzz is replacing the RSS feed for blog sites. As the readers of the feed are opting for Buzz.

And, this really makes sense. Yet, in someways it dose seem self-defeating. With a RSS feed it is all one-sided, you read and then goto the blog post to comment, a benefit.

With Buzz, your followers can comment in the Buzz-O-Sphere without having to visit the site at all. Now, this could become a negative.

But, it does allow for more interaction, something that Twitter in my opinion sorely lacks. Especially when it comes to network marketing.

This doesn’t mean you should stop using Twitter, I won’t! But, sometimes you just have to turn off the 24/7 shopping channel.

Look for ways that really bring the social part back into social network marketing!

…Most of the individuals in network marketing will not take it. I know when I started I didn’t. I followed just about anything that sounded good.

To put it bluntly, I was following training advice from people that seemed to know what they where doing.

It wasn’t until I really began to focus did I understand what was going on. A couple of years ago there where headlines that read:

The Death Of Network Marketing

At that time It surely appeared as nothing more than another lead generation system. Yet, over the past two years I have to believe it has migrated more towards the truth.

Prior to the meteoric rise of the internet and the marketing that came with it, life and building a business was much simpler.

With it being simpler it gave us more time to focus on what was important, not only in our personal lives but also in the way in which we built a business.

One of the chief complaints of any individual is never having enough time! Followed by, not having enough money to start or market a business.

Today so many people involved in network marketing really do have an identity crisis going on…

…They don’t know whether they are an affiliate marketer or network marketing. Mainly because, like I was in the beginning following the wrong training!

There is a path to success, the hard part is knowing which path to take. It begins with a close evaluation of the network marketing training that you are getting, is it balanced.

Early this morning I was sent the link to an article written on Law.com “FTC Blogging Rules Pose Advertising Risks!”

As I read the article, I had tweetdeck going on the other monitor and watching the constant tweeting of one outlandish statement after another.

You know the ads I’m talking about, creating an endless flow of leads, Get 50 to 300 leads a day on twitter or facebook.

Now I know that the ads are so full of crap it’s not even funny. Yet, that is what people want.

In this article their conclusion was, that corporations that engage in social media marketing should pay careful attention to the new guidance!

…Well you can read it on the article itself!

The part where they talk about their business associates is intriguing. As this leads me to believe that these corporations could also be liable for what their associates are saying!

With this information, how long will it take before network marketing companies totally restrict what you can and cannot do via social sites, twitter and yes even your blog…

…It’s either that or leave the company!

Could it also lead to your promotion of something that comes across as hype, like the leads examples above also get you terminated with that company?

Granted, you are an independent representative with that company. But, you are representing them. Which means you may have to start playing by a whole new set of rules…

…And, just as you where saying “Fire Your Boss, I’ll Show You The Way!”

Personally If I was a company that used any form of hype in my statements and had thousands of mouth pieces out there also spreading this unsubstantiated hype…

…I’d be thinking about closing the doors quickly, as they’ll bypass the shills out there and be coming after me!

Or, I’d be reigning them in just as quickly as I could. But, then without the hype would the product sell?

Fortunately, I’ve been a Leaders Club subscriber and promoter for years and our marketing methods have always steered towards the ethical side of marketing.

So as a parting thought, how will your network marketing efforts look to your company if it does come under review?

After all the world-wide-web is really not that small!

When it comes to building a successful network marketing business today, you’ll find polarized views on both sides.

The old school crowd and the new school crowd!

There is nothing wrong with old school methods (Avon Reps have been doing it for years) provided you know exactly what you’re doing.

Yet, most individuals make simple mistakes that quickly destroys their opportunities with their warm market.

And, then some chose an opportunity that for all outward appearances has scam written all over it.

On the opposite side of the fence is the new school network marketers…

…AKA internet network marketers that believe the only way to succeed is with massive action and automation.

Forget building and forging relationships, the true essence of network marketing. They believe in just letting the tools do it.

In this day and age, focusing on one method of network marketing training is really foolish.

And following the wrong advice could even destroy months to years of work! Last June 2009 I wrote a post about “Why Do People Steal Content!”

I recently had and individual email me after his site was shut down by his web host, and you can probably guess why…

Yep, he’d plagiarized content from not only my website but many others as well. He stated I guess the people teaching the course where wrong!

Is this really the new school network marketers marketing methods? Or, is it just a few individuals?

Has society degraded to the point that no one cares because everyone is doing it? Or, because today we want success so badly we’ll do anything to achieve it?

Everyone wants to generate leads on their own…

…Some will take the hard road and do it in an honest and ethical manner, attracting people who share the same values.

They will do this by tapping into network marketing training that is based on sound principles not the current marketing craze.

The question is whose marketing advice will you be following today?

Combining the internet with network marketing, everyone is promoting right? Yet, from all this free advice out there how many have actually been successful with it?

Finding success on the internet requires extreme patience, the one thing that most of us including myself lack.

I was reading an article from Bob Bly today, titled “What You Know Can Make You Richer.”

In the article it pointed out some very specific reasons why so many fail, and I see this all the time.

Bob pointed out that in order to succeed as an internet marketers you need two things:

A. The ability to write.

B. Something to write about.

He also pointed out that you’d need another thing, as he said to be fair

C. how to market, promote, and sell yourself.

This was where the article got interesting, as he said and many of us know. Most of us can do A, and C can be learned. Leaders club has been teaching marketers for the past 16 years.

So when it comes to the internet and network marketing we have wannabe gurus, who’ve read everything about until they can about the subject.

So we are back to who do you trust for advice? A wannabe guru whose never actually done it or someone who has?

I guess what I’m trying to say here is approach internet network marketing advice with a high degree of skepticism.

Why would anyone give up on what they know is working for them in network marketing for what they don’t know? It beats the crap out of me…

Yet, one individual I recently talked to was doing just that. And, this individual was not taking the easy path.

By following the advice he had discovered on the internet, he had started a blog, was on twitter and facebook.

Posting about 5 times a week, in my opinion off to a great start on his blog…

Yet, it wasn’t producing anything. But, he’d already built a sizable downline simply by using his existing contacts…

…You know “That Dreaded Warm List” everyone tells you to avoid.

But, then they ask you to friend them on facebook so they have access to that warm list.

The key to successful marketing is keeping it balanced, and focusing on the areas that are the most productive.

If that happens to be working your warm market, why change. If you can get someone on twitter to stop blasting ads at you long enough to read your tweet, then use that as well.

If you want to blog, do it consistently and give it time to mature and grow. Eventually you’ll have a following or at least have people trying to figure out why you’re in the top 10 of the search results.

There really is no right or wrong method in network marketing as long as you’re connecting with real people.

Why is the divorce rate so high? It really makes you wonder what all the buzz about attraction marketing is about.

One of my former uplines, used to talk about prospecting and relating it to courting. Which really makes sense when you think about it!

When you first begin to date someone you are in essence putting on the sales presentation…

…You’re selling yourself to your prospective spouse. You’re trying to present to them why you’re the best candidate for the job out of the millions of other suitable candidates, right?

It’s ironic that the U.S. leads the world in the number of divorces. If you look at the numbers provided by the CDC it is roughly 50 percent of all marriages end in divorce.

Marriages fail for a variety of reasons, and one cause you’ll hear is we just grew apart…

…The attraction was no longer there!

So what does this mean when used as a network marketing method, should it even be used in network marketing?

Over the years I’ve often gotten the question, “how do I attract smart, professional people to my business opportunity?”

That should be very easy for anyone to see yet, if you stop and look at who you associate with and what you’re offering as a business opportunity it should be self-evident!

There is one group in particular who over the course of the years I’ve found them to be scrapers. In the past they’ve stolen content from not only my websites but others as well.

And, as you could guess that it they type of individuals they attract to themselves. You attract what you are, that’s just natural.

Today, everyone is using the buzz word “You Inc.” They have been instructed to brand themselves, it’s only natural.

There is no doubt in my opinion they got this phrase from one of Leaders Clubs training audios called “Promote Yourself First!”

Yet, the way they promote it and put it into use clearly shows they never understood the concept. Which leads them to question why their prospects just don’t get it!

Here is a video to give you more insight:

Let’s face it prospects are just not that into you, they could really careless about you!

And, if they do fall for your attraction the majority will leave just as soon as they discover it’s really all about you and not them!