Video is 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 (15 times higher than in 2017!)
• 62% of people said they were more interested in a product after seeing it in a Facebook Story

However, so many direct sellers miss out on this tremendous marketing opportunity because they’re uncomfortable in front of the camera. And that’s such a shame! So, if you want to change that and add a 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, 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 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 Facebook Live, and I felt awkward. Afterward, I might be hard on myself – which isn’t helpful 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 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 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 your customers face and 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, dab the moisturizer doesn’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, which is 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 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 procrastinating 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 start with your hook. If you need to restart, don’t stop the recording! Just keep it rolling. You can 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. Doing a Live shows 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 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 for adding videos 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 afterward. 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!

Takeaways

• 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 format, and don’t worry about what others say you ‘should’ do
• Create videos without featuring your face or your voice if that’s what’s stopping you

Want to train your brain for success?

Learn the techniques that will have you addicted to setting and achieving your goals!

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.

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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?

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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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Unlock the full potential of your sales strategy with GenieChat

The all-in-one CRM solution designed to make your life easier and your profits higher.

The cutting-edge platform simplifies customer relationship management with personal reminders, ensuring you never miss an opportunity to connect.

Did you know that 50% of sales happen after the fifth touch? GenieChat helps you effortlessly nurture those crucial relationships, maximizing your follow-up average to convert more leads into loyal customers.

Unleash the power of the Magic Message Generator, featuring integrated, unlimited AI-generated replies, answers, and invites that take the guesswork out of communication. But that’s not all—GenieChat’s unlimited duplication and team-sharing capabilities allow you to impart super-seller powers to your team. Share content, scripts, videos, and more with just a click. Say goodbye to missed opportunities and hello to seamless, effective selling with GenieChat.

Explore GenieChat here

A profile picture on Facebook and other social media is prime real-estate for direct sellers. Don’t underestimate this aspect of your online presence because it’s small.

Unfortunately, I see so many terrible profile pictures – which means lots of direct sellers and party plan consultants waste this space.

Your profile pic is part of attraction marketing

Your profile picture is part of your attraction marketing strategy. After all, to stand out from all the other consultants you are marketing you as a person. Your aim is to draw people to you…not a sunset or your cat or your beautiful baby!

Even worse, I sometimes see direct sellers use their company logo or a picture of their favorite product. That just looks spammy and impersonal which is the very opposite of what you want.

Hot tips for great profile pictures for direct sellers

To attract people to your business online, they need to feel connected to you as a person. An easy way to help with that connection is to make sure you have a great profile photo.

That photo doesn’t need to be taken professionally, it just needs to be a good photo following the guidelines below:

• Include your face and shoulders
• No sunglasses
• Show your teeth in your smile
• Slightly (!) squint your eyes to make your smile more authentic
• Dress well and take care with your hair and make-up

Research shows that a good profile picture helps people to see you as more like-able, competent and approachable – which is exactly what you want as direct seller.

Key Take-Aways:

• Don’t have a picture of your cat, kids or company
• Do have a good picture of you including your shoulders, well dressed with a smile that reaches your eyes

Not sure how to do this whole ‘attraction marketing’ thing? No fear, I’ve got you. Check out my Attraction Marketing for Direct Sellers course to learn how to set-up and manage Facebook pages and groups, and how to draw people to you instead of pushing them away with boring or spammy content.

Did you know that Pinterest drives more traffic to original sources than Facebook and Twitter combined?

Facebook and Instagram want to keep you on their platform for as long as possible. In fact they ‘punish’ content that aims to take people off the platform to another website. They do this by not making those posts a priority in people’s feed.

Pinterest is different. Pinterest is designed to move people off the platform to websites because Pinterest is more search engine and less social media.

This makes Pinterest the perfect place to promote your business!

The unique pins that you create (using Canva, for example) can be used to drive people to your customer group on Facebook or to your website or blog.

I personally prefer to drive people to my customer group on Facebook because that’s where I build a lasting relationship with them.

Pinterest tips to promote your direct sales business

Descriptions with keywords
Make sure your pins have good descriptions that use keywords. Keywords are the words that you might use in a search if you were trying to find you or your products. However, don’t just list the keywords, remember that an actual person will be reading your description.

Don’t worry about followers
On Pinterest followers are not as important as on Facebook or Instagram. They do help to proof that you are legit and helpful when someone clicks through to your profile, but only a few people do that.

Remember that Pinterest is more about searching – people just want to find good content or the right product. If you provide good content (helpful blog posts, for example) then you will gather followers over time. People that follow you are more likely to see your pins in their Smartfeed.

Board titles matter
Board titles matter both to people and to the Pinterest algorithm. Don’t be too clever with your board titles, just be descriptive. You also want to be specific in your board titles. For example, it’s much better to name your board “Gluten-free Cake Recipes” than “Cake Recipes” or “Summer Make-Up Trends” rather than just “Make-up Trends“.

Pin regularly
Pinterest likes it when you pin regularly. Content of regular pinners is more likely to end up in people’s Smartfeed or search results than irregular pinners. If daily pinning is too difficult to maintain, you can use a scheduler such as Tailwind to help you out.

Use secret boards
I highly recommend that you use secret boards to collect ideas and inspiration for yourself. That’s where you keep everything that your don’t need your public ‘brand’ to show.

Promoted pins are the bomb
Promoted pins are the Pinterest equivalent of Boosted Posts on Facebook – but better. Once your Facebook ads are finished, they disappear from people’s feeds. This doesn’t happen with promoted pins because they are saved on people’s boards, they still appear in search results and they stay on your boards. They are also better than Facebook ads or boosted posts because it’s cheaper on Pinterest!

Pinterest is such an exciting platform for direct sellers that I highly recommend you start putting some effort there as part of your social media strategy.