As an affiliate marketer, one of the things that is expected from you is to use your website as a vehicle to advertise the products or services of the merchant. You can do so by blogging about the merchandise itself or by whipping up something else and still being able to link the post to the merchant’s site. However, having a blog or a website may not always be enough.
For instance, even if your most avid followers swear on their life that they will read your posts every day, they might not always have the time to do that. On the other hand, they might have a little time to spare to socialize online by Liking, Tweeting, or Pinning stuff they find in their social networking dashboards. This is just one among the many imaginable scenarios but here is the point: if you’re bent on succeeding in your affiliate marketing job, you need to enlist the help of social media. Not only is it fun because almost everybody is there, it’s also a great tool to promote your reputation as an affiliate.
If you’re having second thoughts as to whether you should form a tag-team between affiliate marketing and social networking, here are some factors that will convince you to give in.
- Brand Awareness
Teaming up affiliate marketing with social media can do wonders for your personal brand and your merchant’s. When you partner with a respected brand, it would be easy for the people in your network to assume that you uphold the same standards, thus reflecting their respect for the brand to you. Be reminded though that your association with certain merchants will affect your own reputation as an affiliate. For instance, if your merchant stumbles upon certain issues that can compromise its standing in the business, you as an affiliate would feel the effect ripple to your own job.
- Overlapping Grapevine
Remember the theory about six degrees of separation? This can be applied when you take advantage of social media as you do affiliate marketing. Social media has this ability to make the world seem smaller by making you aware of how the people you know happen to also know each other without you making the introductions. At the same time, social media can also make you realize how big the world is for making people you never thought existed known to you.
Both of these scenarios can serve as your edge since it is easier to market if you already have a big audience. Posting on your wall or feed the piece of content that links to your merchant is easy but prodding your friends and followers to click through it may not be so. This is where the importance of knowing your audience, or in this case your network, comes in.
Having a large network doesn’t guarantee that your links will be visited. Thus, throw something into the description that will catch their attention like a meme or a funny photograph. Just remember to present it with sensible descriptions to keep them interested.
- Affordable Cost
One of the many great things about social media is it’s almost always free. Signing up doesn’t require much aside from a valid e-mail address and a promise that you agree to their terms and conditions. Keeping a paid domain and some premium apps for your website is a good idea, but free is free and when it comes to affiliate marketing, nothing beats social media when it comes to efficient networking.
- Effortless Call-to-Action
Another perk social media brought to the world is allowing people to carry out actionable steps sans the hassle. By adorning their dashboards with buttons in lieu of calls-to-action, your followers who like (or God forbid, dislike) your post can simply click the corresponding button that demonstrates their feelings.
- Jumpstarts Discussions
Just when you think social media has run out of incentives, here comes another one. Aside from the call-to-action fixtures, anything found on social media can be easily discussed in the comments section. The opportunity to react to a post, or any piece of content for that matter, as soon as you can makes social media a fertile ground for discussion. And where there is discussion, you can expect that word will be spread. Keep in mind to insert your links strategically, whether it’s on your social feeds you’re posting or in your own website.
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