Social Media Marketing and Webinar Strategies

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, Snapchat, Periscope, Vine, Tumblr, and Google+ are the top social media platforms with literally billions of users and hundreds of billions of posts. And, since you’re already spending your time on social media, it should be really easy to build your business by posting online, right? Well, while you may have your preferences for perusing certain apps while you’re lying in bed, using the internet for building your business can be an overwhelming endeavor.

Can you imagine how utterly impossible and ridiculously expensive it would be to maintain a presence on all those different platforms? For most of us it’s hard enough to keep one platform up-to-date (companies like doTERRA^® generally have teams of professionals working to maintain social media platforms). So how should you spend your precious time marketing your business online? Which platforms are the most effective? What should you post? How can your online activity create interest for your business? And finally, how can you get results without wasting time and energy?

First of all, let’s delineate between your personal social media activity and your professional social media activity.

Personal Social Media Activity

Your personal social media activity includes the content you post about yourself and your family, as well as articles, images, videos, and memes you find relevant and presumably interesting to your personal network. The great news is that engaging this audience is easy.

doTERRA has created rich, engaging, and valuable content that’s easy and effective to share. Pick posts from doterrablog.com, doterrabusinessblog.com or the company’s official Facebook page and YouTube channels. You can also create events pages to invite friends as well as share photos your doTERRA-related travels, classes, team events, and corporate events. I recommend up to 20 percent of your personal social media posts include something about your business. You can even share monthly promotions and enrollment incentives.

Casually sharing content about your doTERRA business will pique the interest of friends and family, and you will see some intermittent response and maybe even get a few enrollments.

Professional Social Media Activity

I’m a big proponent of maintaining a compliant and effective professional social media presence. Because I don’t have a lot of time to spend on maintaining various platforms, I’ve streamlined and automated my social media marketing for the best results. You can do it too by taking these five critical steps:

1. Start with an Online Marketing Plan
   
   While you have a plan for your live events, sampling, and follow up calls, do you have an online marketing plan? An online marketing plan worksheet will help you identify your audience, message, brand, promotions and offers, lead generation process, and follow up system. A simple Google search will provide you with plenty of worksheet options. It may sound overwhelming, but after completing the worksheet you’ll know exactly who to reach out to and what to say to them. You’ll identify the best times to reach out to your audience and you’ll discover what they will respond to.
    
2. Streamline Your Online Activity
   
   I currently recommend Facebook as my business social media platform. With over one billion users, it certainly has the audience. With Facebook you can easily create a business page, build a following, and capture leads. Rather than attempt to manage multiple platforms outside of your personal use, focus on establishing your presence using a Facebook business page.
   
   Just as I recommended earlier, use official doTERRA posts, videos, and images as content on your page. Create your own content as well and remember to safeguard your posts by using compliant language that’s valuable to your audience.
   
   To build your audience on Facebook, you can start by inviting friends and family and even run ads to drive new people to your page. I recommend running weekly product giveaways as a tool to build your audience. If you have great content, you’ll immediately see interaction, shares, and an increase in your audience.
    
3. Create Value for Your Audience
   
   Once you’ve established your presence and an audience, it’s important to create value for your readers. The doTERRA Facebook page is a great example of this. Post recipes, DIY tips, and oil uses, and remember to use compliant language. Your giveaways will provide value as well.
   
   The most effective tool for providing value to your audience will also serve you in generating leads. I rely on hosting online classes (also known as webinars) as an effective way to engage my audience, offer value, and capture lead information. There are many free and paid webinar tools available. If you’re really budget-conscious, look into Google Hangouts On Air as a way to hold online classes. If you prefer a more streamlined, automated approach, look for webinar tools that allow you to pre-record your class and play it over and over again.
   
   
4. Provide an Incentive for People to Engage
   
   Each time someone registers for your webinar, you’ll have a new lead. You can email them, message them, and even call them to begin creating a relationship. Even better, at the end of the class, offer a sample or other incentive and invite attendees to provide you with more information about themselves in order to qualify. Require them to provide their interest level, the oils and products they’re most interested in, and even their interest in building their own doTERRA business. When you offer an incentive for them to engage, they’ll gladly take your phone call. Personally, I love sending out the Sample Single Oils Trio or the Sample Blends Trio and a Deep Blue Rub Sample.
    
5. Follow Up with Continued Value
   
   Finally, it’s important to continually provide value to your prospects after they’ve attended your online class. Make sure you add them to your email newsletter and frequently provide them the opportunity to enter a giveaway. Invite them to follow-up webinars and call them up with pointers on how to use the oil samples they’ve received. Most importantly, make sure you provide them with the gift of inviting them to enroll in doTERRA—the most valuable gift you can give them!
   
   If you follow these five simple steps you’ll discover that you only really need to update your Facebook page—as opposed to dozens of different accounts. If you automate your webinars, you’ll decrease the amount of time you spend teaching classes and instead spend much more time talking with prospects who are interested in joining you in living a doTERRA lifestyle and even building a doTERRA business of their own.