Social media is a powerful marketing tool but you need to know how to use it effectively. Just placing your affiliate link on your bio and pushing the occasional post isn’t going to cut it.
You need to not only build your audience but engage with them and become an authority for the brand or product you are attempting to promote. Without authority and trust on social media, your approach is likely to fail and fail quickly.
Social Media and Affiliate Marketing
The mistake that beginner affiliate marketers make when it comes to social media is believing that it is simple. For a long time, even experienced marketers found it difficult to leverage the potential of these platforms. In the early days through the noughties, they largely got it wrong and it took a while to come through with a coherent strategy.
In short, to successfully market on social media, you need to have a nuanced approach. Each platform has its characteristics and attracts a different kind of demographic. Each needs a slightly different marketing approach.
One dimensional affiliate marketers can often spend more time throwing out Tweets and Facebook posts rather than building connections and creating a following.
If there’s one piece of advice for social media and affiliate marketing it’s that you need to have a plan. If you start blindly throwing out links and sales messages without building a relationship with your audience, you won’t get very far.
Choosing the Right Social Media Channels
There are hundreds of social media channels out there and 4.8 billion of us use them every day. The most popular are sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and they have billions of users, your potential customers. There are also more obscure social media channels like Happn, BIGO LIVE and Marco Polo.
One key to choosing your social media channels is not to overstretch yourself. If you are engaging across a lot of different platforms it can weaken your engagement and stretch your resources. It’s better to be the master of one or two channels rather than failing at 7 or 8. You can always add later, once you have a foothold.
Let’s take a quick look at a few of the most popular social media channels:
- Facebook: With more than 2.9 billion users, this is the big cheese when it comes to social media and one affiliate marketers generally make a priority. Not only does it allow long-form content but you can access groups and other facilities that have a ready audience for your marketing.
- Twitter: With 192 million active daily users, Twitter is most well-known for its short posts. This can often put affiliate marketers off but brevity doesn’t limit your scope. Done well, Twitter can give you access to a wide range of potential customers.
- Instagram: Owned by Facebook, Instagram is almost entirely visual rather than textual and the largest share of users are between 25 and 35. It can be difficult to leverage for affiliate marketers and requires using imaginative approaches as it doesn’t allow in-post links. It does, however, work very well for fashion and similar products.
- Snapchat: This is similar to Instagram in that it’s very visual but it does allow you to have in post links for your affiliate marketing. Snapchat users tend to be younger too and nearly 60% are female.
- Pinterest: This social media platform was long ignored by affiliate marketers but has become increasingly popular in recent years. It works by pinning images to a virtual board and marketers can add links to specific pages or products.
On its own, social media can be a pretty powerful tool. When it works best, however, is when it’s part of the affiliate marketing stacking eco-system. It needs to link, for instance, to and from your website through sharing buttons. It can, for instance, play an invaluable role in getting out news of your latest YouTube video.
Building a Following on Social Media
As with anything online, it’s all about how many people you can reach and that means building a following. This doesn’t happen overnight and requires you to engage with others and use imaginative approaches. That means having a conversation, encouraging reposts of your work and building relationships.
An organic following, developed over time because you’re a great account to follow, is far more powerful than one where you simply follow others and hope they reciprocate.
5 Tips for Using Social Media In Affiliate Marketing
- Know your audience: Each social media channel has a slightly different set of demographics and people who are interested in particular things. It’s important to get to know your chosen platform and what potential it offers. Do your research and think about what kind of content you need to produce to attract the right people.
- Time and effort: Social media isn’t a quick, easy solution and many beginner affiliate marketers are surprised that it takes a lot of hard work to leverage. There are shortcuts such as using paid advertising but this depends on you having a substantial marketing budget to spend and confidence that you can get a good return on investment.
- Engaging: Engaging means exactly that. Too many affiliate marketers just use their social media accounts to push links to the affiliate. This quickly gets you recognised as someone who has nothing interesting to say. At worst, it can make you look like a spam merchant. Take part in the conversation and don’t be afraid of going off message as you build those all-important relationships.
- Post regularly: One or two posts a week isn’t going to cut it. You need to be posting interesting and relevant stuff on your social media accounts regularly. That’s why it’s important not to overstretch yourself and try to engage with too many platforms at once.
- Post great content: Just like your website or your blog, you need to produce great content that a) is relevant to your audience and b) catches their attention. Great content gets shared and that’s the real power of social media so bear that in mind at all times.
The Power of Social Media Advertising
This is a great shortcut and it depends on your budget. Many platforms like Facebook and even Twitter now have excellent paid advertising solutions that can be tailored to individual needs. The benefit is that these get you an immediate response. The downside is that it takes time to learn and it can be a drain on resources if not carried out effectively.
Even if you are not financially able to include paid advertising in your affiliate marketing mix at the moment, it pays to start learning the ropes now.
Learn to Leverage Social Media for Affiliate Marketing
Social Media can be challenging for beginner affiliate marketers. If you want to learn how to make the most of your online presence, the MAP affiliate stacking ecosystem covers all the areas you need to consider, clearly and concisely.
Superpower your affiliate marketing from day one and focus on strategies that work and deliver a strong return on investment.
Want to find out more? Visit the Master Affiliate Profit site today.
