Hey Vince (Hey! Great name!),
Absolutely! As a matter of fact, that is one very common question during the GDI webinars. If you haven't attended yet, do.
At first I had no luck whatsoever. But, like many people I had this idea that social and business networking sites were
advertising sites when in fact, they are
relationship builders.
What has worked for me time and again is just to be myself and provide good content to whatever site I am on. More than that, I spend time commenting on other people's content, updates, videos, links or whatever else they post. Also, I might write a quick note to say hi, and after they respond ask some questions about them. What do you do? How is your family? Just normal chit chat and friendliness. Once you get a good idea about who they are, what they like and so on, then you can find a way where GDI might fit in their life or business. By that time, my suggestion is viewed as a friend suggestion and not a sales pitch. Works great.
Another thing that has worked really well on Facebook is I don't talk about GDI much at all. Might post a link to an article I write or blog post dealing with GDI. But that is quite rare. However, right on the side of my profile, right under my picture it says, "Helping each other grow one website at a time. Find out how --> [MY GDI WEBSITE]."
So, people connect with me or I with them based on similar interests. They see my updates hit their screen from time to time and eventually stop by to say hi, comment or something else. And from there, many have not only clicked the link (watching my tracking stats lets me know where they come from), but many eventually join. They might ask a question about it first, so I ask if I can call, we chat and then I close them.
Really easy. But the trick, at least for me, is really being fairly quiet about GDI on the front end. Provide content, help people when you can or comment on their stuff, learn about them, and then slip GDI in quietly.
Hope this helps.
Vince too
P.S. Another thing you can do on Facebook and many other sites is create a page, forum or discussion group strictly for business. If you use it to provide good content or spark discussions, it's very easy to "sell" GDI without being frowned upon. The thing about that is that the people who become a member of your page or whatever came of their own free will with something like that already in mind.
