Momentum Factor Founder & CEO Jonathan Gilliam just returned from his presentation at the ANMP Convention in Las Vegas where he and his co-presenter Mel Atwood shook up the industry, just a bit - calling for an end to hype and over-promising with a presentation titled "No More Bullsh*t" and for a new industry movement toward authenticity in everything direct sellers do.

Smart companies know the future of marketing includes "social selling", tapping individual social networks with a great product and story. Direct selling is an optimal way to do this, only most companies who see promise in the model do not necessarily need the infrastructure of a full-fledged direct selling company. Recently, demand for a deeper social selling has attracted to our industry a new kind of company, the "Tweener."

We're excited to announce Momentum Factor's latest web development project, Organo Gold's primary replicated distributor sites, to be launched soon.

With all the upline and downline messages, event flyers, congrats, alerts, news and promotions your distributors receive, it's a wonder there's time for anyone to sell. Most email gets scanned and trashed, with only a few select messages worthy of reading. Your email needs to be one that shines through the clutter.

Last week. a friend's Facebook account was hijacked. While he was traveling, the criminals who overtook his account immediately launched a well-known money scam in an attempt to extract money from his friends. Fortunately, his friends alerted him, and it was quickly reported it to Facebook, who disabled his account the next day.

Any direct selling executive knows that one of the greatest ongoing threats to their company is an action by a governmental regulator based on overblown income or product claims made by distributors.

I added my first edit ever in Wikipedia today. I love Wikipedia for a quick summary of any subject, and was surprised when I visited the Online Reputation Management entry today and found what was basically an ad. So, I got an account and went to work. It was fun.

I sat in recently on a client's annual convention and it was a blast. Lots of energy and fun for this company that does a large amount of its business in places like China, Korea and Mexico. Which got me thinking, how can we capture all this excitement in far-flung countries via the social web, as we do in the US? Believe it or not, millions of people outside the US are using social media, and a large number of them aren't using it the same way we are.

Are people skeptical about your products? Do they reject your product or promise out of hand? People are naturally averse to hype. In personal lives, in politics, and especially in network marketing. Perhaps it's the industry's larger-than-life personalities or maybe an unfounded fear that if we don't scream about something it won't be heard.

What could be more discouraging than working all day to build trust and excitement about your company, then seeing your company bashed and its execs persecuted online? You will hear me say again and again that in our business, trust is everything, and in many cases that trust can be severed in an instant by internet “commenters” or online complainers with too much time on their hands.