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Social Marketing Tips For Affiliate Marketers
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 😊
2 Simple Ways To Add Value To Your Affiliate Offers
2 Simple Ways To Add Value To Your Affiliate Offers
Affiliate marketing as an online business opportunity is very attractive as it is low cost and low risk, but as an affiliate you’re always going to have a lot of competition.
Not only are you competing with others who are selling similar products, but there may be dozens, hundreds or even thousands of serious affiliates who are selling the EXACT same product as you are.
How do you beat your competition?
By adding value (bonuses) to any affiliate offer you promote. This means providing some sort of a bonus – a freebie – to anyone who buys an offer through your affiliate link.
You’re probably wondering what the simplest and most effective way of creating a bonus for your offer or service that you are promoting.
It can be overwhelming and quite frustrating as you want to give your audience and potential buyers a valid incentive to purchase from you or through your affiliate links.
Here are a couple of simple ideas for adding value to any affiliate offer.
Offer Buyers A Free Report
If you are not sure where to start then the most effective and simplest way would be to create a free report or detailed guide.
You can make it as simple or as detailed as you like but it must provide value. Another point to take into consideration is that the guide must have a unique flow that coincides and complements the original training or tutorials.
In other words, it must be structured in a way that acts as a reference that works in tandem alongside the original content as a supplementary alternative.
You can add images and additional text to help further expand on the training while providing more insights to allow users to better understand the topic and complete tasks etc.
To give an example of this, if you are a personal trainer and your clients need help with losing weight and correcting their dietary habits, you will create a detailed guide and structure it in a way that follows a simple step-by-step process.
To elaborate on this example to keep it as simple as possible you will focus the guide on 3 key areas which your clients must follow to help them get the required results.
You will start off with an estimated time period in which they must adhere to all the rules and complete the tasks as required for them to start seeing progress.
The next step will be to create a detailed day to day meal plan that covers the types of food they should eat at each meal. Making sure to provide information based on the number of calories, protein, and macronutrients they need to consume or restrict to allow them to work within any boundaries or limitations they may have.
The final step will be to incorporate a structured exercise plan that will provide information on the best warm-up routines and exercises to implement to increase stamina, build muscle or lose weight.
You can cater the information based on the client’s proprietary needs so they can follow the plan in a simplified manner.
One of the most important aspects of providing a free report or guide to your followers is to not call it an eBook or pdf.
For example:
You don’t want to use this phrase – You can download a free pdf or eBook using the link below.
Even though there is essentially nothing wrong with this call to action but as the words, eBook and pdf are so commonly used they are rarely seen as an incentive or valuable even though they could be packed with detailed information.
So, in your audience’s eyes, it is seen as less valuable, and they may be less likely to use it.
Instead, what you should do is give the eBook a different name such as:
- Detailed Report
- Proven System
- Proven Formula
- Structured Blueprint
- Step-by-Step Process
- Detailed Document
This small change will greatly help enhance the perceived value of your bonus.
It’s a great way to get people interested in your brand, and an even better way to introduce yourself as an expert.
It will also give you an extended reach as an authority figure on the subject or topic.
You’ll not only get instant credibility for yourself and your brand but also have a chance to reveal how the training is helping others deal with their specific problems or challenges.
Now that you have those small changes in place, you can now provide a simple CTA or Call to Action to encourage your followers to provide their email address in exchange for the free report.
OK, here’s another way to add value to your affiliate offers.
Offer Buyers A Checklist
Sharing a detailed checklist is another great way to add value to an offer, service, or promotion.
People love incentives and checklists are a great way to increase a viewer’s interest in a product.
It can help users to follow along with the content of the training etc in a step-by-step order as it also helps to keep them accountable as they progress.
It also helps to solidify more trust in your product so they can get more value.
They can just check off the tasks they have completed along the way allowing them to move on and focus on the next stage of whatever process they are involved in.
This can be useful not only for solo content creators but also for groups and teams that need to work closely together on specific tasks to complete projects etc.
For a lot of teams, sharing and checking off checklists helps everyone stay on track with projects. For instance, maybe you have a big project to take on, but you don’t know who is responsible for what steps in the process.
You can create a detailed checklist of events that can be designated to each team member so that everyone involved knows exactly where to focus their time and energy on.
This will help to avoid confusion while allowing the entire process to have a better flow and be more streamlined.
There are plenty of ways you can create a detailed checklist!
- Create PDF files
- Dynamic Online Templates
- Printable Templates
You can use various design programs to build the files and convert them to pdf or different reading formats that can be made viewable online or made printable so that you can access a physical copy if needed.
Another alternative would be to create interactive checklists that have a more flexible dynamic as you can access them anywhere at any time as long as you have access to a computing or mobile device with a stable internet connection.
Everything involved with these interactive checklists is hosted online so you can view them through your internet browser window, but they can also be made printable if required.
There are so many benefits to creating detailed checklists as you can cater them to whatever area, interest, or niche where you have an established audience of loyal followers or as an incentive to entice new followers to join your group, offer or service.
You can create anything from holiday travel and packing checklists to remind people of all the specifics they need to take with them and be aware of when travelling abroad.
Even step-by-step health guides, cooking and diet plans to exercise plans etc, even how to set up an online business where they can check off each section to let them know which stage they are currently on their journey.
Checklists are a great way to summarize the content in a training course or program into individual tasks while also helping to increase engagement with the user.
You can sell checklists as an additional way to earn an extra income source, or you can give them away for free as an added bonus for an offer or product you plan to promote, you have the freedom to use or implement them how you wish.
If you like the 2 simple ways to add value to your affiliate offers in this article, you will surely like an extended and detailed report containing another 8 ways to boost your affiliate earnings.
So, check out the featured resource below for the free Simple Affiliate Strategies detailed report; download, read it and take action 😊
Some Key Affiliate Marketing Tools
Some Key Affiliate Marketing Tools
Knowing how affiliate marketing works is essential. So is being able to create content that attracts the right audience. But once you know the fundamentals of operating as an affiliate online, you’ll want to employ the use of a few tools that can help you do your job quicker, better and more efficiently. So, be sure to add these tools to your affiliate marketing plan.
WordPress themes are one type of tool that can help you increase sales. Each blog comes with free themes installed that you can choose from – but there are themes that have specifically been engineered to help affiliates make conversions.
One example is called Theme Forest and it’s very popular among professional bloggers. Their themes cost a bit of money, but they are highly customizable, so once you begin seeing some profits, you may want to advance your theme design to the next level.
Keyword tools are the best way to get an edge on the competition. You can dig down into your niche and compile a huge arsenal of longtail keyword phrases that will attract tons of traffic to your affiliate site.
There are both free and paid keyword tools. The free tools typically let you do a limited amount of research. They’ll return a list of keywords and phrases, tell you the global monthly volume, and give you a word like “low, medium or high” for competition levels.
Then there are the more advance keyword tools. These types of paid keyword tools help you get even more information, including the profit potential of the words and phrases.
Plugins are great for affiliates to put on their blog because they help your blog automate certain tasks. Or they provide others with the ability to do tasks. You can add a social bookmarking plugin so that your visitors can share your reviews with others on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter or via email.
There are plugins that allow you to easily embed Amazon product listings into your blog post. Some help your site become mobile friendly in an instant. You can research all of the latest plugins for affiliate marketing online.
There is some software on the market that helps affiliates optimize their sites for search engines, or gain backlinks from other good resources. You’ll have to evaluate each one to ensure it’s not engaging in spammy behavior before you use it for your own site.
Using affiliate tools is something you should do gradually. Trying to automate too many elements at once can overwhelm you. You want to have a hands-on understanding about what makes you site grow and convert before you replace yourself with an automated system or tool.
Affiliate Marketing Growth
Once you learn the basics of affiliate marketing, you’ll begin wanting to know about exploding your profits. You’re going to hear a lot of people repeat the phrase, “wash, rinse, repeat” to you – and that can get frustrating if you don’t know exactly what that means.
It basically means that once you start seeing success with your current tactics, you’ll want to replicate them and make more money. There are a few ways you can do this as an affiliate marketer looking for growth, so apply these tips to your affiliate marketing strategy.
First, you can go into more niche markets. If you know that your strategies are working in the parenting niche, for example, you can expand into another niche like fitness. You want to make sure that you have time to manage the number of sites that you create.
You can also grow your profits by expanding on the products you’re promoting. You might have built a site about baby strollers, for example. You can build on that by creating similar niche sites, like baby car seats, baby clothes, baby swings, and so on.
Once you start promoting more products, you might want to build a home site that links to all of these mini topics. So for example, you could build a main parenting site that links to your other sites on strollers, baby bottles, car seats and more.
You can also look into other affiliate programs to boost your commissions. If you’re only promoting on Amazon, for example – check out Commission Junction, Share-a-Sale, and so on.
If you’re on ClickBank only right now, then see what’s on JVZoo, Warrior Plus, and even Amazon in the book or Kindle departments. Those can tack on extra commissions to your profits.
Another growth factor is obviously traffic. You should be studying various ways to boost traffic to your affiliate sites. More traffic means more conversions. Build a subscriber list so you can communicate with them repeatedly.
When you’re ready to make the leap, you can grow your affiliate income by becoming a product creator. Writing a book about your affiliate experiences allows you to promote the tools and courses that helped you along the way. Inside your course, you could link to a keyword tool, for example – and make a commission from that.
Affiliate Marketing Mobile Perk
Is your affiliate marketing site mobile-friendly? Not many are. If someone goes to your website from their iPad or iPhone, it should have a mobile option for them to see. This allows them to read the content easily so they don’t have to squint or manually expand the screen from section to section.
Many people are replacing the use of home PCs with mobile devices. The numbers are still in favor of home personal computers, but the use of mobile technology is growing at a fast rate.
If you’re promoting tangible items, it can increase sales. People want to shop and compare prices or find items for sale that they can’t find locally. So let’s say a mother wanted the latest Monster High doll for her little girl.
She is in her local Walmart or Target store, but they’re all sold out. She desperately wants this for her daughter, so right in the aisles, before she buys a substitute doll, she takes a chance on seeing if it’s for sale online.
She Googles the name of the Monster High doll and lands on your affiliate toy review site where you’ve just written a review about this doll, pointing her in the direction of Amazon and its free shipping option. She orders it instantly – thanks to your mobile-enabled site option.
Holiday shopping season means an increased mobile demand, too. This is the time of year when there is always a sold-out sign hovering where the most in-demand items were once shelved.
People can comparison shop for price bargains, get Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales on your mobile-friendly domain while also getting local bargains offline. But it’s not just tangible items that sell well on mobile devices.
As an affiliate, you might get into things that mobile users often buy on their devices. This includes things such as eBooks and ringtones. Sometimes they’ll buy a mobile app and you can earn a commission for it.
There are some free tools that help you take your site mobile in an instant. WP Touch is one plugin that’s free where you can instantly activate it and turn your site into a mobile-friendly entity.
Or you can invest in the specific design of a mobile-friendly option customized for your domain. These prices vary, but you want to make sure that it doesn’t create any errors for those wanting to use your site from a PC if they choose that option.
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 😊
