The potential of social media and what it offers to businesses that know how to use it is no new thing. Since MySpace started leading the way all the way back in 2004, companies have been looking for ways to leverage the space to their advantage. Many of them have found that it’s best done through the social potential of affiliate marketing. Your social media page, your channel, and your audience could end up making you more than a little profit if you get it right.
Finding your place
Before you start posting anything, you need to get to the drawing board and decide what your affiliate marketing platform is going to look like. A little focus always helps, so think about the niche or the audience that you want to focus on. Something that you have a genuine interest in, whether a hobby, industry, or lifestyle, is a great place to start. The more naturally your profile can blend in affiliate content and be able to hold court with your followers, the better. Choosing your niche also leads into choosing the right channel for you. If your niche is something highly visual, such as fashion or food, then picture-centric channels like Instagram or Facebook might be your best bet. Twitter is better for constant engagement over subjects that drive lots of conversations, however.
Nailing the brand
Depending on which social media channel you choose, you have different levels of customization for your page. A profile picture and cover photo are necessary, and it may be worth investing in a professional-looking logo from a freelance graphic designer if you want to pull off a certain look of prestige or authority. There are also plenty of royalty free images you can find on the net if you want to expand your look with fitting imagery. Don’t neglect to fill the details in the “About Me” section that many of these sites feature. By listing your interests or your focus, it makes it easier for the relevant audience to see they’ve come to the right place.
Making posts that make impacts
You can’t just be another of the anonymous voices clogging up the social media space. It’s time to start looking at what makes posts effective and what makes them valuable. Your partners want you to drive clicks to them, after all. Bare affiliate links aren’t always the best option, as they can contain a lot of random numbers and letters that a) use up all your post word limit and b) look untrustworthy. Use tools like tinyurl.com to shorten links and make them more digestible so you can include more flavoursome text alongside them. Regardless of channel, it has been shown that relevant, funny, or interesting pictures alongside posts make them much more engaging to the audience as well. Try to think of quality content and the value that the post has to the reader, then add the affiliate link. They have to be drawn to it naturally.
Be social
It’s social media, it’s only going to be so successful as a one-way channel. If you want to make people more likely to click on your links and to share your posts, you have to be reciprocal. A repost and retweet the quality content from those who share your sphere or influence or your niche/market. Give a little extra attention to other affiliate marketers, as they can do the same and help your own affiliate content reach more feeds. Take part in conversations with your followers. If they leave a comment, reply. Do this as exhaustively as you can. When you grow big enough, it will be hard to reply to every single one, but making the effort creates a level of interactivity and acknowledgement that makes your followers more likely to keep supporting and spreading your message.
Always be monetising
The tips above will help you keep growing your channel while sharing quality content, which is very much key to your affiliate marketing monetisation strategy. But, you have to make sure that you’re always looking for those opportunities to monetise. Affiliate networks like WOW TRK make it a lot easier to find the relevant partners who are looking for channels just like yours. It’s a good idea to have at least something of an audience built before you go looking for partners to make your channel look more attractive, however.
Affiliate marketing on social media isn’t passive income, and it isn’t necessarily easy. Work goes into finding the right channel, the right partners, and the right audience, as well as crafting engaging posts. If you’re willing to put the time in, however, it can be one of the most profitable uses of your online savvy.
