Not just the algorithm, but people also value Live videos. Through a Live, it’s easier to feel connected to you as you’re showing your personality and passion.

It’s one of the best things you can add to your social media strategy – and it’s free!

I have noticed that many consultants don’t know what to talk about on a Facebook Live, or they are out of ideas after a couple of videos.

So in this article, I want to help you with some ideas that you can use on your Facebook page or in your Group.

Facebook Live Ideas for your direct sales biz

If you’re brand new to your direct sales business, you can give your biz a boost by unboxing your kit on a Live.

If you’ve been in direct sales a bit longer, you can do an unboxing when you get a delivery with new products or when you’ve earned free delivered products.

2: New Range First Impressions

People love new products. When you get a new range for your kit, get excited, do a Live review, and share your initial reactions. Tell your audience who you think this product would be suitable for and any other information you think they’ll want to hear.

You can extend this with a follow-up Live a week later with further observations on the products and how you’re using them and finding them longer term.

Perhaps you can even theme your reviews per month. For example, for one month, you could review concealers or mascaras. Other topics could be how to use throw rugs, the best cupcake recipes, etc.

You can even link a product give-away for attending (or watching the replay) of your Facebook Live. During the Live, you give them a code word to collect, and at the end of the month, everyone who collected all the code words will go into the draw for a prize.

4: Share Your Story

Talk about why you joined and what you love about your direct sales business. This is great ‘attraction marketing‘, and it also helps people get to know you better. Sharing your own story helps people to feel a stronger connection with you.

You don’t have to go Live long. But, a quick, exciting, or funny video will go a long way in building that connection with your Facebook tribe.

6: From an Event

Next time you attend a big company event, a team meeting or a training session make sure you go Live. A quick Live video before or after the event (or even during the break) is a great way to show off your direct sales business from a different angle.

8: Top Tips & Product Hacks

Offering your tips on making the most of a product will be appreciated by your tribe. This is not a review but more of an educational video. Videos on how to use a product in an unexpected way (a hack) are very popular online.

9: Tell Stories

Have you ever heard the saying ‘facts tell but stories sell’? It applies to your Facebook Lives too.

The back story about how a product is made, where it’s from, or some specific ingredients is a great way to talk about your products without being salesy. You can also talk about your company, the founder or some of its history.

10: Interview a Customer or a Team Mate

If you have a customer who’s achieved great results with a product you sell, they might be happy to talk about it in an interview. This is a very powerful testimonial.

You can also focus on the business side and interview a teammate who can talk about how the business changed their life.

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When you start with Lives, you might find that your audience is small. That’s okay. The replay will still be available and rank high. (Also, you can re-use suitable videos in your Facebook parties – bonus!)

If you’re consistent in showing up Live, you will build your audience over time.

If you want some help on what to post in other than Lives, download our huge list with 50 ideas for social media for direct sellers!

Video content is vital to your online presence and social media popularity. To gain success on social media, you must create your own videos because social media algorithms highly value unique content.

But this doesn’t have to be difficult or technical.

I like to keep things simple and cheap! Sounds good, right? Keep reading for easy, no-fuss tips to level up your video content.

1. Easy Equipment for Your Videos

Use what you already have!

Don’t buy expensive cameras unless it’s your hobby! You can use your smartphone, iPad, or laptop.

If you want to use your smartphone or iPad, you probably want some way to prop it up while you’re filming to keep it stable. You can use anything that will keep it steady, like books, a mini bean bag or a paperweight. Be careful you’re not muffling the sound. Also, make sure the microphone is free to record your voice.

Alternatively, you can grab yourself a cheap tripod – eBay or Amazon are full of very affordable and easy to use options.

Use the rear camera

Don’t use the front camera on your smartphone or tablet. Use the back camera instead. The rear camera is much higher quality, so use that to record your videos instead of the ‘selfie’ camera at the front.

Also, try to record in landscape mode (horizontally). This will give you good footage on larger devices, not just phone screens. You may have to record different video versions to suit different platforms or use an app to resize it. Many editing apps can resize for various socials for you to shoot once and then edit it for other social media platforms.

2. Lighting

Lighting is crucial in videos, and fortunately, it’s pretty easy to get right if you pay a little attention.

Natural Light

Natural light is best, so sitting near a window with natural light that lights up your face is perfect.

Face the window and don’t have it behind you to get the best lighting. Then, check the image to see the difference between facing the window and having the window behind you.

Using Lamps

If you can only film at night or your house always looks shaded, you’ll need to get some lamps to light you up. Use any lamp to light your face from the front. You can use desk lamps or other lamps you already own without buying anything new. Try to get a warm shade as fluorescent lights are very harsh and don’t favour you.

Ring lights are cheap and popular and made for videos, so that’s a great option if you record regular videos. In addition, affordable ring lights are easy to find online.

Tip for people with glasses

Angle your lamps or ring light to shine down on you, and you don’t get distracting reflections in your glasses. It doesn’t have to be straight above you. Just slightly above and angled will do the trick. Practice a few times until you get the angle right.

3. Video Backgrounds

Try to have an uncluttered background that isn’t distracting the viewers. For example, consider using a banner with your company logo. You can also place a few products strategically on shelves behind you.

If you want to use your shelves to highlight a few products, keep the shelves mostly empty so they stand out, and it doesn’t look cluttered and distracting. Also, make sure you stand out from the background: don’t wear a white sweater if you’re in front of a white wall.

4. Make-up

I recommend that, at the very least, you use bright lipstick. Also, if you’re using make-up, apply it a little heavier than you usually wear – the camera loves it!

Bright colors attract attention and look great on camera. However, I have specific lipsticks that are too bright for daily wear, so I wear those colors when recording videos.

5. Editing

Do as little editing as possible. You probably need to trim the start and end so that you don’t have a weird “is this on?” moment, but instead, start with your ‘hook’ to get people interested.

On your phone, you can edit with the free app Inshot or Quick (both free on iPhone & Android). If you like using your computer, iMovie or Kapwing are excellent options. If you want to use the green screen effect without using an actual green screen, check out Unscreen, it’s also free. And if you’re a Canva user, they have great video templates with some editing features.

6. Timing

Keep it short. Videos of 2 to 3 minutes perform well on social media. Besides, if you’re only just getting started with recording videos for your direct sales business, it’s easier for you to do short videos too.

Be aware that some social media platforms require videos to be shorter. If you want to post it on multiple platforms, aim for 30 seconds to the 1-minute duration.

7. Uploading

Always upload natively. That means uploading the video to each social media platform instead of linking to a video on another platform.

On Instagram, you must always upload your video. You can’t link it, but on Facebook or Twitter, you could link to a YouTube video. Try to avoid that and instead upload your video to every platform, so it’s ‘native’. Social media algorithms prefer native video better, so more people will see your video.

8. Captions

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Learn how to draw people towards you on social media!

Video is already the number one type of content on social media and continues to grow in popularity. Here are some statistics:

• 72% of consumers prefer learning about a product or service through a video
• Viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it through video
• Social media posts that include a video have 48% more views than those that don’t
• By 2022, online videos will make up more than 82% of all consumer internet traffic (that is 15 times higher than 2017!)
• 62% of people said they were more interested in a product after seeing it in a Facebook Story

However, so many direct sellers are missing out on this tremendous marketing opportunity because they’re not comfortable in front of the camera. And that’s such a shame! So, if you want to change that and add video to your social media marketing toolbox, this article is for you.

How to become more comfortable in front of a camera

Practice

Many of us now do regular Zoom or Teams meetings for our jobs. If that’s you, take that opportunity to practice. Turn on your camera in online meetings to get used to it. Ask questions and speak up! You might as well get paid to practice speaking in front of cameras, right?

Self-talk

The next tip is about self-talk. Try to reframe your worries about creating videos into positives. For example, if you’re worried about stumbling over your words, know that this makes you human and relatable to your audience.

If you listen to conversations around you or watch other people’s videos, you’ll notice we all stumble over words or restart sentences all the time. It’s human and normal, so don’t make it into something huge that stops you from creating videos.

Another worry lots of direct sellers have about creating videos is what their friends or family might think of the videos. First off, your friends and family are probably not your ideal customers or hosts, so the videos aren’t really for them. Secondly, your friends or family might surprise you with how supportive they can be – give them a chance. But if they truly worry you, start doing videos in places where they don’t hang out: your private Facebook Groups, online parties, TikTok, etc.

A great way to change your self-talk is to embrace the word ‘yet‘. If you find yourself thinking “I’m so uncomfortable in front of a camera” or “I don’t know what to talk about” or “I waffle and get off-track” or “I don’t like the way I sound”, use the word ‘yet’ to change it up:

I’m scared in front of a camera	I’m not comfortable yet in front of a camera
I don’t know what to talk about	I don’t know what to talk about yet
I waffle too much	I don’t have a structure yet
I don’t like the way I sound	I don’t like the way I sound yet

This is a little psychological trick to get your brain to accept that this is not a fixed thing that’s set in stone, but that it’s changing and changing for the better. It’s telling your brain that there is a future out there in which you are comfortable in front of a camera, in which you don’t waffle, in which you do know what to talk about and in which you do like the way you sound! I know that using the word ‘yet’ seems like such a little thing but there’s great power in adopting this practice!

The other psychological trick is to adopt a compassionate phrase every time you beat yourself up over a perceived mistake. Let’s say I stumbled over my words in a Facebook Live and I felt awkward. Afterwards I might be hard on myself – which really isn’t helpful at all and only makes me feel bad. The way to combat this habit is to say to yourself “Even though I stumbled over my words, I still love and accept myself“. It’ll feel a little strange at first but just trust me and keep saying it until you feel a little better about the ‘mistake’.

I know it sounds a little woo-woo, but monitoring your self-talk and being kinder to yourself makes a measurable difference. Besides, if you’ve been hard on yourself for years and you are still afraid to get in front of a camera, being mean to yourself doesn’t seem to work too well. Isn’t it time to try something new?

Use an outline

I don’t recommend using a script, it’ll make you sound lifeless and if you go off-script you’re likely to panic or waffle.

Instead use a super simple outline with bullet points. Put that on your screen or on paper and refer to that when you need to. Here’s how to structure a quick and simple video:

• Hook: a fun fact, bold statement or question. You only have 3 seconds to draw people in so start with something that grabs interest.
• Problem: talk about the problem that your customers face and that your product solves. Such as messy handbags (your product is a handbag organizer) or dry skin (moisturizer) or not enough time (planner).
• Solution & Tips: show the product that solves the problem and give a usage tip or two. For example: use this pocket for your emergency cash, or dab the moisturizer don’t rub, or the planner has a special page for shopping lists but you can also use that for your water intake.
• CTA: end your video with a ‘call to action’. The call to action is what you want the viewer to do. Do you want them to engage and comment? Or do you want them to message you to order? Have a clear call to action so the viewer knows what to do. Many people miss out on this step in their videos and it’s such a missed opportunity.

Embrace your mistakes

Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. Your videos are never going to be perfect. And that’s a good thing! You want to be human, you want to be you, and you want to be relatable. Learn to embrace your mistakes and then to be kind to yourself (“Even though I made this mistake, I still love and accept myself“).

Use the 5-Second Rule

Motivational speaker Mel Robbins teaches a psychological trick called the 5-Second Rule. When you want to do something, like creating a video, you must start to physically move within 5 seconds otherwise your brain will find reasons to stop you.

So when you’re thinking, “I really should create a video about this new product“, you count down from 5 and when you reach 1 you physically get up and start working on the outline. Doing this will stop you from overthinking and procrastination and start working instead.

If you’re a procrastinator, this might work for you.

Keep it rolling

Once you’re set-up, you hit that record button and just start with your ‘hook’. If you need to re-start, don’t stop the recording! Just keep it rolling. You can always trim your video later but you don’t want to stop your action now that you’ve started.

Keep your good bloopers, don’t throw them away. After a while you’ll see that they’re funny and you can release your blooper reel. I can guarantee you that you’ll see engagement on that blooper video soar because people can relate to that so much!

Find your format

Live videos are generally the ‘gold standard’ in terms of the algorithm and engagement from the audience. By doing a Live you show your fans that you give them your time right then and there. It’s a great thing to add to your marketing mix. However, you don’t have to do it that way if it doesn’t work for you!

I recommend you try out doing a pre-recorded video, Lives and any other format on social media. But, if after a while you realize that you don’t like Lives, don’t do them. Find the format you like and stick with that. There are many options of adding video to your social: IGTV, Instagram Reels, Tiktok, YouTube, YouTube Shorts, Facebook Stories, etc.

Start by not showing your face

One option to make things a little easier if you’re shy is to start your video journey without showing your face. Instead, show a product and do a voice over. Or perhaps put a product on a whiteboard (put the whiteboard on the table or floor) and draw and write about the product around it, a bit like a mindmap.

Another option is to record yourself flicking through a section of the catalog, perhaps with a voice over commentary.

You can probably think of more short little videos you can do to add video content without showing your face!

No voice, no problem!

If you don’t like speaking on camera for whatever reason, you can make videos without ever speaking. In fact, you can just make that your thing!

The whiteboard idea from the previous section will work beautifully, flicking through the catalog will also work fine. You could add text and arrows afterwards. You can also use cards or sticky notes to add ‘captions’ to your videos.

Put some music (not copyrighted!) behind the video and you’ll have a great bit of video content without ever speaking on camera.

I hope these tips will help you get started on social media videos because it’s a tremendous opportunity for direct sellers and party plan consultants and I don’t want you to miss out on it!

Take-aways

• Use your work’s online meetings to practice being on camera
• Be kind to yourself and stop tearing yourself down
• Use an outline, not a script
• Embrace your mistakes, you’re human
• Get yourself started with the ‘5-second rule’
• Keep it rolling once you start filming
• Find your own format and don’t worry about what other say you ‘should’ do
• Create videos without featuring your face or your voice if that’s what’s stopping you

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Instagram is a great social platform you might want to add to your roster of social media that you use in your direct sales business. Instagram tends to attract a younger audience and generally a more affluent audience than Facebook.

Here are some things to consider when marketing your direct sales business on Instagram.

Avatar
An avatar is fancy marketing-speak for your ideal customer. You’ll want to know who your ideal customers are, how old they are, what their interests are and on which social media platform you’re more likely to find them. For example, if your avatar is a 65 year old retired woman who likes to knit and enjoys jokes, you’ll be posting very different things than if your avatar is a 19 year old man with an interest in martial arts. You can also imagine that the older knitter hangs out on Facebook while the young Karate-kid is more likely to be found on Instagram.

Feed
Instagram is an intensely visual platform and you only have a moment to grab someone’s attention before they scroll past. You need to think about your style, how you want your images and your feed to look.

Your personal branding is an important factor to consider on Instagram. Think about some of the accounts you might be following: can you recognize their style instantly? How do they grab your attention when you’re scrolling?

To start defining your personal brand, think about five things that you love personally. For example are you a regular beach goer and is that part of your personality? Are you outdoorsy or do you love indoor decorating? Are you into cute animals or flowers? Is your style minimal and elegant or boho-chic? What colors inspire you and fit with your style?

Here are some different feeds to start your brainstorm:

You want to be visually appealing so people will want to follow you. You also need to be consistent in your style so you people instantly recognize images from your feed.

Content
Although you are running your account to promote your direct sales biz, you don’t want to be a ‘product dumper’ and just post picture after pretty picture of products and seek sales. Attraction marketing is more than just selling a product or business opportunity. You can learn more about attraction marketing here.

Make sure your content is varied, interesting, entertaining and informative. (Easy, right?) To help you with some ideas check this article, it’s mostly aimed at Facebook but there are plenty of ideas for Instagram too.

Images
Taking your own photos in the style you want is a great way to ensure you have an original and visually appealing feed. Read this article on how to take great photos with your smartphone. You can also add some stock photos, sites like Unsplash and Pixabay offer free photos to use legally. And if you’re using Canva to create your images, you already know they have a wealth of graphics and photos to use for free!

Don’t steal photos from other accounts or other sites, respecting copyright is important and you don’t want to get fined for unlawfully using someone else’s images.

Bio
The bio is a space for you to write a snapshot about you and your business. There is limited space so it needs to be carefully planned. Here are the general best practices for Instagram bios:

• Add keywords and descriptive words into your profile name. You can do something like “Name: Independent Company X Consultant” (following your company’s social media rules)
• Have a one sentence summary that explains what sets you apart. Something like “Empowering women with awesome make-up” or “Helping people to be their best self with supplements and training”
• Use line breaks and emojis to make your bio easy and fun to read
• Include ‘call-to-action’ to send your followers somewhere to learn even more about you. For example “Click the link below to learn more” if you link to a general page about you with further info on your parties or joining your biz, or “Click below to start shopping” if you link to your shopping page.

The photo in your bio helps people to connect to you, which is super important in social media. I have profile photo tips in this article because so many people waste an opportunity there.

You are only allowed to add 1 link to your bio, so you want to think carefully about where you want people to go: to your Facebook customer group? To your ordering site? To your sign-up link? There are services like Linktree that help you to create a little landing page with multiple links, which is highly recommended.

Call to Action
As stated above, you want to have a strong call to action in your bio but also in every post or video! Think about what you want people to do after they’ve read your post or watched your video. Do you want them to comment and engage? Do you want them to click the link in your bio and shop? Make sure you ask people for an action every time you post something.

Scheduling
It’s much easier to plan a consistent feed with a scheduling tool. Some even allow you to see ahead of time what your feed (your nine-grid) will look like so you can make sure you achieve the look and style that is your personal brand. Here are a couple of apps you want to check out:

• Cinchshare
• Later
• Combin
• Plann

Interaction
Even if you’ve scheduled your content ahead of time, make sure you make time every day to pop into your Insta. Remember that you want to be social on social media and that you’re in a relationship business. Responding to comments and liking comments will also help ensure that Instagram sees you as a genuine account, not just a bot.

Hashtags
You want to use appropriate hashtags so people who follow certain hashtags will also see your posts (and hopefully start to follow you). There are a few things to keep in mind with hashtags. The first thing is that you want to mix it up. Don’t use the exact same tags all the time as the algorithm might see you as a bot.

You also want to create a mix of niche, little bit popular and very popular hashtags. If you only use very popular hashtags like #bossbabe or #mompreneur your posts will just disappear in the masses of other posts with this hashtag.

I’m not saying don’t use them at all, just add a few other hashtags as well. A tool like Inflact will tell you if a hashtag is rare, frequently used or average. It’ll also give you a few new ideas of hashtags to use.

You’re allowed up to 30 hashtags so you have plenty of space to use a good variety to reach a wide audience.

Instagram Stories
Stories allow you to share content that is less curated because it doesn’t appear on your image feed and only lasts for 24 hours unless you save it as a highlight.

Instagram stories can be very engaging and creative and generally get more engagement than feed posts. Look at Instagram stories you enjoy and see if you can start adding a few stories to your account. If your story is relevant for more than 24 hours, make sure you save it as a highlight!

Instagram TV (IGTV)
Don’t you love IGTV, I get lost there sometimes and suddenly find an hour gone just hopping from clip to clip. If you already create some videos for Facebook or YouTube, see if you can reformat them for IGTV and upload them to your Insta too. Having an IGTV channel on your account helps with visibility and you’re more likely to get engagement on your account.

Instagram lets you really express your creativity and personal style, which helps you to stand out as a direct seller.

Let me know below what you do with Instagram that I haven’t mentioned here.

I know it feels good to focus on the likes that your Facebook posts get, but engagement is far more important.

Engagement includes the comments, the reactions, shares, clicks as well as the likes.

Facebook wants you to focus on connection, education and entertainment and will prioritize posts that way.

The algorithm is designed to customize to each individual, meaning your newsfeed is curated to be so unique for you that’s almost like a fingerprint.

The more people engage with your posts, the better because that’s training the algorithm that they want to see your content and encourages Facebook to show your posts to more people’s newsfeeds.

So, the all important question is ‘How do you encourage engagement with your posts?’

How to encourage engagement with your Facebook posts

1. Live Video
This is the ultimate way to boost engagement because you can interact in real-time. The Facebook algorithm loves Live videos and gives great priority to them in people’s newsfeeds. I have some ideas for your Lives here.

2. Engagement Posts
These types of posts encourage interaction by asking a question. Often it asks people to choose between 2 options (‘this or that’) or an opinion on something thought-provoking. The posts are not salesy, the purpose it to remind your customers that you exist and to entertain a little.

Be social and positive

Make sure you respond to any comments and try to keep the conversation going. Responding makes people feel good and seen and it shows the algorithm that the post is popular.

I’ve always run my business with the philosophy that people might not remember what you said but they’ll remember how you made them feel. So keep interacting in a positive way with your audience.

Keep in mind that people might not take any action with your business until the 10th time they see you, so the more engagement and interaction you get, the better. Eventually they’ll take action and order, book or join!

Download our bundle of done-for-you engagement posts to get you started. If you want to create your own, here are some ideas:

• which one . . . . (create a choice of most hated chores or favorite holiday destinations)
• this or that . . . (create a choice of two, such as coffee or tea or heels or sneakers)
• would you rather . . . (create a choice or three equally bad choices for some fun)
• what’s your recommendation . . . (ask for recommendations on products, or something completely unrelated)
• what’s your favorite . . . (favorite product or range, or something unrelated like favorite chocolate indulgence)

Want to pull people towards you?

Learn how to become a social media magnet with Attraction Marketing!

I recently had a long chat with a friend of a friend, a lovely lady called Claire. She’s joined a direct sales company with products she’s very excited about and she really wants to make it a success.

However, she was in a bit of a dip when I talked to her.

You see, she wants to be a ‘social seller’ only. Due to her personal circumstances she can’t do parties or events. She was told it would be easy and that she could sell online in her pajamas if she wanted to.

Unfortunately Claire found it to be a bit more involved and a bit more difficult than promised! She had only made a few sales and most were to family.

After talking with Claire about attraction marketing and the mistakes I see social sellers around me make, she was inspired to change the way she ran her business on social media.

She took my advice and she’s now seeing more engagement with her posts, more enquiries and sales are starting to come in too. It’s early days but we’re both encouraged by the change!

In this article I’ve summarized the advice I gave to Claire.

Social Sellers forget about being social

The mistake I see 90% of social sellers make is that they’re focused solely on the ‘selling’ part of ‘social selling’ and they forget about the ‘social’ part

For social selling to work, your selling needs to be social, entertaining, educational and service based.

When it’s done well, social sellers can be hugely successful. But it requires you to put in some thought and planning for it to work, not just post an endless stream of product photos.

Have a think about how you can add value to your posts. When you talk about your products, try to answer these questions:

• What is it?
• What does it do?
• Who is it best for?
• What problem does it solve?

And the last question is the most important!

Whenever you can, demonstrate your products and its benefits to bring them to life.

Don’t post an image with something like “Buy this awesome drink bottle! It’s on sale…here’s my link.”

Bring it to life with a story. Try this instead:

“I’m on a mission to drink more water. They say drinking enough water can improve memory, mood AND help reduce sugar cravings. Woohoo! (I need all the help I can get with that…)

I’m loving my new drink bottle, it keeps my water cool all day (even when I leave it in my car for ages). So now I don’t waste as much money on disposable drink bottles AND I can easily keep track of how much I’m actually drinking.

Who wants to join me and be my water buddy? The drink bottles are currently on sale – hurray! Let me know if you want to join the water mission and I’ll send you the link.“

You could add a boomerang video of you drinking or moving the bottle up and down to grab people’s attention in the newsfeed. But the story is what brings it to life, it explains the benefits and it’s personal and relatable.

Build a Community on Social

It doesn’t matter which social platform you’re on, you want to build some sort of tribe of fans that come to see you and your offers.

You attract your people by posting interesting, fun, educational content with your personality.

If you’re running out of ideas for what to post on social media, on your business page, customer group or personal profile, download this free list of 50 Social Media Ideas for Direct Sellers.

For even more ideas, check out these articles as well:

• The 1 mistake you don’t want to make on social media
• Attraction marketing for direct sellers

When it comes to being a ‘social seller’, put your focus on the social part and the selling will follow!

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If you want to learn more about how to rock your Facebook business pages and your Facebook groups, check out the Attraction Marketing Course.

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You have a customer group, right?

As a direct seller you need to be on social media (yep, stating the obvious here).

Which social media? That’s up to you, wherever you’re comfortable and have connections.

But I do recommend you add Facebook to your mix – not in the least because you can create private customer groups.

Your customer group is the place where you can hang out, be a little more relaxed and have some fun. It’s also the place where you can sell to your existing customers and recruit new team members.

Why you need a Facebook business page & a group

Personal Profile	Business Page	FB Group
Your family & friends	Your ‘billboard’ (is Google searchable)	Your ‘clubhouse’
Sparingly post business posts	Post about your biz in a fun way	Engage with your customers and hosts
Doing business on a personal profile is not allowed and is spammy	You’re allowed to sell, run contests, and advertise	Engage, teach, have fun, and also sell and recruit
	Less importance in newsfeeds	More importance in newsfeeds

Many direct sales companies don’t allow you to post prices or specials in public places, so that’s where your private group comes in super handy too!

I recommend that you create a private group that is visible to everybody. That gives you full control over who is a member and also makes it a little more exclusive.

What to post in your Facebook Group

Once you have your Facebook Group setup, you want to make sure you engage that audience. You want them to enjoy their time in your group, you want them to stay and you want them to participate.

Don’t worry too much about the size of the group, it’s quality over quantity here! An engaged audience that comment and participates is much more important than having lots of people in your group.

I generally recommend the 9 – 1 – 1 posting cycle (full credit to Karen Clark, she’s the one who invented it): Out of every 11 posts, you post 9 unique and interesting bits of content, one promotional post (perhaps with an image or video provided by your company) and one personal post.

If you’re struggling with ideas for those 9 bits of unique content, have a look at my 50 Social Media Post Ideas for Direct Sellers, that’ll start your creative juices flowing!

One thing you want to add to your posting schedule is ‘engagement posts’. These are posts that invite a comment such as games, polls, or questions. I have an article with a bunch of free engagement images for you to download that you can use in your groups or your Facebook parties.

So now that you understand what to post, your next step is to schedule a bunch of posts. You can use a scheduler such as Cinchshare or use Facebook’s own scheduling service. By sitting down each month to plan out your posts, you make your life so much easier.

When you schedule your posts, leave some room for spontaneous additions such as business achievements, recognition or a special. Whenever something interesting happens in your personal life that your audience can relate to (you kid’s first day of school, a kitchen disaster, dropped your phone, won a raffle, etc.) you can also post that in your group, not just on your personal page.

Personal posts like that make you less corporate and more of a person – just like your customers.

How to sell in your direct sales Facebook Group

So now that you have your regular attraction marketing posts worked out, let’s talk about selling in the group.

There are several ways to do sales, and I recommend you use all of them (variety is the spice of life, after all).

Educate
If your product lends itself to it, you want (and even need) to educate people on how to get the most out of it. Examples are how to use a product to its maximum potential, how to care for your product, any product ‘hacks’, any background on how it was made or why was created, etc.

This is especially useful when a new product (range) is launched by your direct sales company.

The best way to do educational posts is with video! Video rules the rankings on Facebook and I highly recommend you get comfortable making videos and going Live.

With each educational post or video you want to end with a ‘Call To Action’ – that’s what you want your customers to do. At the end of a video or post you could say something like: “For more info on product XYZ, just send me a message now” or “Let me know in the comments how you use product XYZ” or “If you want to buy this product, just send me a message and I’ll set you up” or send them the link to the item on your shopping website.

Specials
Specials are always exciting for existing customers. Definitely post your company’s sales, special offers, etc. in your group as soon as they come out.

Series / Focus
If your products lend themselves to a series of posts, definitely do that. You don’t just have to do educational posts, you can mix things up with related games, polls, memes, etc.

Make sure you have some sort of focus in the series. Here are some ideas:

• Ingredient Focus = focus on 1 ingredient. Post about which products use it, what it does (benefits), where it comes from, history, in pop culture (book or movie references), etc.
• Color Focus = all the products in your catalog in that color. Post about any backstory (personal or from the company), how to mix and match, any educational bits on these products, etc.
• Product Group Series = when certain products go really well together. This is almost like a ‘hack’. If they buy this one product, you recommend that they add these other products because then they can achieve a better outcome. Post about why do they go well together, any way to maximize the use, can they get these products as a host reward or on a special, etc.
• Purpose Focus = a series about all the products that do the same thing (ie. cleansers or purses). Post about why you need this type of product, what makes them different and how to choose which one is right for them.
• Seasonal Focus = a series on seasonal products. Highlight each product, talk about how it enhances your season, etc.
• New Release Series = all the new products in the new catalog. This is very much an educational series but you can add in any other bits of information (where it’s made, pop culture references, hacks, how to care for the product, etc.)

And don’t forget, end each video with a call to action. What is it that you want them to do? Do you want engagement? Ask for comments. Do you want a sale? Post the link to the ordering site or ask them to message you. Do you want them to request a catalog? Ask them to message you.

Pick one thing and end the video with that ‘call to action’.

When you do a product series, make sure you do it over a few days or a week and don’t do them too often. Spread them out over the year.

A 100 Square*
A fun way of ‘selling’ is using a 100-square. You create an image or document with 100 numbered squares. You sell each square for a certain price, let’s say $5, and you write the buyer’s name in the square.

This will give you $500 to buy a whole bunch of products from your company to create a couple of prize packs with. Once all the squares are sold you draw the winners and send them the prize packs! (If fewer squares are sold, you can either not do the draw (and not take the money) or buy fewer prizes)

If your total is enough to earn host rewards, you can use these for an extra prize.

The 100-square is very adaptable and can be used in a bunch of different ways to suit your situation. One variation is to use it for fundraising. You can donate a percentage of your commission and even the host rewards to a charity of your choice.

If you want to fundraise regularly, you could even pick a new charity every month (do a poll to ask your Facebook group which charity they’d like to fundraise for) and do a 100-square every month.

* As this is essentially a raffle, you have to be mindful of the rules and regulations in your state or country around raffles. Always abide by the rules!

Over to you: do you have any specific type of post you use to sell in your customer group?

If you want to learn more about ‘attraction marketing’ and how to draw people to you without being spammy, I’ve got just the thing for you: the Attraction Marketing Course for Direct Sellers. Check it out below!