Social Marketing Tips For Affiliate Marketers

It doesn’t matter if you’re an Internet marketer who creates his own products or an affiliate marketer promoting other people’s products – social marketing is a very important part of the profit puzzle.

Social networking has many perks – it’s free, it lets you connect with prospective customers, and it’s easy to use. You don’t need to be on it 24/7 for it to work, but you do need to understand the best way to use it.

Sign up to the best social networks that everyone’s using at the time. This changes on a yearly basis. Some social networks last longer than others. Right now, you want to have a Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest account. Tumblr is also popular among the younger generations.

You want to have a presence on the trendiest social networking sites because that’s where your customers will be. Tik Tok, anyone?

Set a schedule that gets you in the habit of participating on the social sites. There are two types of people who use social networks the wrong way. The first are those who create an account, make one post and then never return.

Or, if they return, it’s sporadically – like once every 6 months when they finally realize they set up an account and then forgot about it. This makes people forget about you, and the goal is to create a loyal following.

The second type of participant gets so consumed with social networking sites that they don’t get any real work done. They’re on Facebook 24/7, and then they realize they didn’t create any posts for their blog or research and review any products. It’s an affiliate failure either way.

Set up a schedule for your social networking that teaches you how to get involved, without becoming an addict. Use an online or offline egg timer if you want – but make sure you get on them frequently and get off them when the time is up.

Balance your business with personal promotions. As an affiliate, you may have the desire to sell, sell, sell because you want to increase your commissions. But by just selling and not sharing anything about you, you’re shooting yourself in the foot.

People buy from those they know and trust. Sending link after link out about products isn’t personalizing your efforts. It’s polarizing more than anything. So do a little mix when you’re on the social networking sites.

Follow the right people so they’ll follow you back. Don’t demand it, either – that looks desperate. Just start interacting with people in the same niche so that you start reciprocating the sharing of each other’s content – and so people following them begin following you, too when they see you’re a like-minded individual.

Affiliate Marketing On Twitter

Twitter is a really great place for affiliates to do some social networking because it doesn’t require a bunch of time for you to master – or utilize on a day-to-day basis. At just 280 characters (not words) per Tweet, there’s not much you could do.

Twitter is used by people of all ages, all around the world. While Pinterest is primarily used by women, Twitter is used by both men and women. It’s been around awhile, so it’s not a flash in the pan social site.

Decide who the Tweets will come from. Do you want your account to be from a person (your name), or from a brand you create for your affiliate marketing business, like “Toy Review Dad?” You’ll choose the Twitter name you want based on how you plan to promote on the site.

Create an account with the background, header and avatar. Too many affiliates register for a Twitter account and leave the pathetic egg image as their avatar. That’s just being lazy, so you’ll want to fork over the $0.80 it costs at depositphotos.com or use an original image and give your account a picture to represent you.

The header and background aren’t as important, but you can do some serious branding using that space – and you can often find a graphic designer on Fiverr to help you achieve that goal of getting your URL exposed on this space.

Link to your site with an appropriate tag line. In your header area, they give you a certain amount of space to write a little motto or tag line. You want to make your relevant to your niche. And make sure you include your website URL there, too! It will be an active hyperlink that people can follow to your offers.

Become a frequent, but not spammy Twitter user. You want to have a Twitter account to supplement your social marketing efforts, but you don’t want to clog anyone’s Twitter stream with endless promotions.

There are tools you might be tempted to buy that automate the process, but you should really keep control over your account manually and use it several times a day for a few minutes at a time so that you make better connections.

Reciprocate the kindnesses other Twitter users show. People will ReTweet your Twitter messages for you when they feel it’s something they want to share. This helps your links go viral and increases your chance of making a commission. Make sure you return the kindness for other people if they’re also marketers so that you’re not appearing selfish online. But at the same time, don’t ReTweet anything you find to be shady.

Follow people interested in the niche. You want to follow people who have talked about the niche you’re in on Twitter. Do a search on the site for keywords to find out who’s chatting about it. They’ll often follow you back, engage with you and ReTweet your messages!

Is PPC A Good Affiliate Marketing Strategy?

Pay Per Click (PPC) is a form of traffic generation where the person paying for the traffic only pays when their link is clicked on. The most popular method is Google AdWords – which is that line of ads you see in search results on the right side of your screen.

PPC can certainly be beneficial if you know what you’re doing. But when you go into it blind and uneducated about the strategy, you’ll lose a lot of money and have nothing to show for it in return.

Basically, you’ll be targeting keywords and phrases and trying to pay the lowest cost per click possible. The ads have specific criteria for length and some networks are picky about what you can and cannot say or link to, so you need to read all of the rules carefully so that you don’t have your account shut down quickly.

You can target broad keywords, but the competition is going to be very stiff for those – and very expensive to you. A better way to go would be to make up the traffic in volume and by using a few filters and additions.

For example, you want to include a list of negative keywords that will exclude your ad from being shown to certain groups. For example, the word “free” or “download” might mean someone is not willing to pay for the item.

Another group to target is the group where all of the words are misspelled. That might be brand names, niches, etc. You may have to dig around a bit, but this can be profitable because most affiliates don’t go after misspellings.

Make sure you set a realistic budget for your affiliate efforts. Don’t approve a certain daily budget that you know you can’t pay. Remember that many affiliate programs take 60 days to pay out, so don’t expect to use the profits to pay for past advertising.

When you do begin using pay per click ads, make sure you keep a careful watch over their conversion rates and tweak small elements of them to see if anything helps or hurts your click throughs.

You might want to initially begin using free traffic strategies while you educate yourself about the paid traffic possibilities. Sometimes new affiliates begin daydreaming about the possible commissions and lose sight of the fact that they’re competing against people who are well-versed in this type of promotion.

Follow these affiliate marketing tips, and you’ll be on the way to becoming a successful affiliate marketer in no time. And if you want to know more about affiliate marketing check out the featured resource below for a free report; download, read it and take action 😊