There’s been heavy buzz about Facebook ads – and with good reason. Created properly, they can be an effective tool in rocketing your popularity like a meteor, or branding your business.

But almost no one talks about using Facebook ads in reverse – as a source of valid ideas for market research.

Think about it. If a subject is on Facebook, and it’s got an ad, it’s likely viable. Are there groups? Fans? Often you can find out exactly how many Facebook fans a strong group or website in your niche actually has.

You can also see if people are actually interested in a particular product; how passionate they are about the subject; and what age group, gender, education background and more its members display in their profile.

That’s instant targeting! No more fumbling around in Alexa, trying to figure out what the actual human demographic is likely to be. Right there on Facebook you can see:

What the fans are talking about
If the niche is actively “hot”
If it is growing

You can also get an idea of its size from the number of fans. Fans in the millions? It may be too broad for your purposes. Only 6 fans? Watch that niche to see if it grows – perhaps even join the Facebook Group, if it’s something you’re particularly passionate about. But don’t invest any ad money yet.

Once you’ve found a likely niche on Facebook, set up a profile page for yourself using highly specific keywords. Pay attention to the ads served up to you and you’re spying on your competition. Click on their ads, visit their sites, view their source pages and see what keywords they use in their META tags (if any).

Using Facebook ads for market research is one of the best ways to see if a niche is really on fire!

Download Your FREE copy of Facebook Social Ads Exposed

Building an Online Network Marketing Business is in many ways like building any online business. It takes certain skills, a level of motivation and probably most important of all, a willingness to learn and to be ‘coachable’.

In my time building mlm businesses here are the 7 secrets that have been shared with me by some of the most successful online network marketers out there:

1. Have a VERY Strong Reason.
You’ll hear this referred to as ‘the dream’, ‘your goal’ and so on. The whole point of this is that you are going to need something to drive you on, even when things don’t seem like they’re working. Having a nice car is one thing, but as we all know, we can easily settle for less and give up. Get emotionally attached to your goal, make it something you can see, believe and feel strongly about. Amongst the easiest ‘emotional goals’ you can focus on are those involving your children and your immediate family. Imagine being able to provide that dream for your family. Visualise it and see it in your minds eye as if you have already have it, feel it, believe it, get attached to it.

2. Use a ‘System’ to Generate Your Own Leads and Extra Cash
Don’t make the mistake of buying leads. There are lots of systems out there designed to allow you to generate your own leads for free. The systems known as ‘funded proposals’ are designed to do two things: Provide you with an endless stream of new leads and Put money in your pocket. I cannot endorse the funded proposal system enough. Network Marketers suffer two problems: not enough leads and running out of money. The funded proposal solves both of these problems.

3. Promote YOU First.
People join you in business, mostly they don’t really join you in business for the products. People love to follow leaders and will join you in business for your leadership and the relationship they can build with you. By promoting You Inc. it maybe that you can lead your team to opportunities when things may have gone wrong in your existing company. (This doesn’t sound too positive but it is a reality and it does happen)

4. Focus on Attracting Experienced Network Marketers.
This is what we might call a ‘no brainer!’ Experienced network marketers already understand the principles of mlm, they already understand the power of leverage and duplication and most importantly they are usually educated and positive and are a lot easier to work with. By focusing on attracting experienced mlmers you are not going to  go through the whole pyramid, scam argument and all that other negative, time wasting blah blah stuff.

5. Take the Time to Build Relationships with Your Leads
Provide value, care about them, develop bonds, share your skills and experiences. Listen to their challenges and issues, empathise, understand and where appropriate provide solutions. Always remember: It’s the little things that make a BIG difference, one tiny act of kindness can go a VERY long way.

6. If You Can Help – HELP!
Support the network marketing industry, support your fellow network marketers. It really doesn’t matter which company they are with, whether they are cross line, upline, downline or whatever. Always help out where you can. Remember a rising tide will raise all ships. If you can suggest a solution to a problem, suggest it, If you know of a resource that will help someone, send them to it. What goes around comes around. What we give out is what we get back.

7. LEARN Stuff Fom People That Have Already Done It
You simply must be ‘Coachable’ Quite simply makes no sense to try and figure everything out on your own and effectively rewrite the book. there are thousands of successful online network marketers to learn from and they are giving giving giving! Find someone you can relate to and learn from them. Look for a mentor and become a student. ASK For Help!

Get FREE ACCESS to my “Squeeze Page Traffic Secrets” video by opting in to the small form at the top of this page. Your comments are always warmly welcomed!

Submitting articles is a marketing strategy that cannot be underestimated!

I am not going to try and say that submitting a single article to one of the directories is the answer to all our prayers and we’ll all get rich over night! That would be daft.
What I am getting at here, is that for a ‘long term online marketing strategy’, writing articles and submitting them to the article directories is a free resource that will benefit you in several great ways:

1. Writing an article actually makes you feel good! I know this doesn’t directly translate to anything tangible in a financial business sense, but, feeling good about yourself is pretty important when it comes to being successful in business. A great deal of satisfaction can be derived from writing a good article.

2. Authoring an article positions you as an expert. We all need to ‘brand’ ourselves here on the Internet and becoming an authority in your niche is important. We tend to believe what we read in ‘black and white’ and the author is generally seen as an authority in that field. The benefits of being seen as an expert in your arena are endless, it attracts people to you and enables you to deliver information to your colleagues and prospects with relative ease.

3. Link Popularity. When you submit an article to a directory, there is usually a ‘resource box’. The resource box is a field where the author of the article can write a ‘mini bio’ and include a couple of links to websites. A condition of someone using your article in their blog, ezine, website, newsletter etc is that they should include the ‘resource box’ in the post. This creates back links to your websites which will improve the page rank or importance of your website in the great scheme of things.

4. Visitors! Similar in principle to the above point, but that resource box will encourage more visitors to your websites. A good article will leave the reader wanting to know more about you and your business. The traffic you generate using this technique is free and of high quality. That is to say the visitor already has an interest in your subject and is likely to be already warmed up to your promotions.

5. SEO. I’m sure you know this acronym means Search Engine Optimization, if you already have your website key phrases figured out, embedding them in the title and body of your article will yield search engine results and readers of your articles. Another great free traffic source.

So there we have it, some brilliant reasons to use Article Marketing in your online strategy.

One of the best article directories I have discovered, (there are literally hundreds of them!) is ezine articles. You can check out my profile here if you like: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ian_T_Taylor

All the best, get writing!

Cheers!

Ian