If you’re hoping to start making money from affiliate marketing, social media is undoubtedly an aspect that you may like to consider using. Today’s internet is about connecting and social media tools help everyone do that.
People use online tools to make buying decisions, to stay “in the know”, and to connect with others. And you can use those tools to your affiliate marketing advantage.
Entire websites and books exist that are dedicated to telling people how they can use social media to sell products. But let’s scratch the surface to give you an idea of how it helps as well as tips for effective affiliate marketing with social media.
What Is Social Media
Social media tools and websites help people to share. Some are based on having your own web space to share information via video or text and others are microblogging status update tools that can encompass other tools being aggregated. Web spaces allow you to share media with others either privately, publicly, or both in the form of links to online places. Social status update tools let you talk to others as well as share links.
Social media is increasing in popularity as people become increasingly connected. People use their computers and their phones to connect with others and to connect with information they need. They’ll connect with friends and family and they’ll also connect with strangers that they find a common thread with. Many successful affiliate marketers are influencers in the social sphere. Their wisdom and helpful nature has made them appear “follow-worthy” to others.
How Can Social Media Help Your Affiliate Marketing Business
By developing your own following on social media sites, you can market your affiliate products. People on your MySpace friends list could see links and blog posts where you talk about the products you’re selling, for instance. Friends on Facebook can follow your links and you could create groups and fan pages based around products you sell.
Twitter and Friendfeed allow you to tell others about blog posts you’ve just published or articles you’ve just written. Digg, Delicious, and StumbleUpon are sites that you can use to share links with others that you find interesting. Building a like-minded group of followers helps you market to your potential customers and continue marketing to existing customers.
Not only can you find people to follow you but you can follow your mentors and influencers in your niche so that you can stay on top of news and trends that could help you be a successful entrepreneur. These tools also have a business intelligence element that allow you to extract data that could help you be more successful.
Tips For Effectively Using Social Media With Affiliate Marketing
No one likes to be spammed. Build meaningful relationships with your followers and they’ll be more apt to pay attention, click your links, and re-tweet your updates. Treat others on social media how you’d like to be treated (answer questions, re-tweet or thumbs up meaningful and valuable updates among your group of followers and friends) and you’ll also be able to get more benefits from it.
Affiliate marketing with social media sites can do a lot for your online business, so learn all you can about effectively using them to your advantage. You’ll find tools, resources, articles, books, and videos that help you learn to unleash the potential of social media marketing to positively impact your financial future.
Sean Rasmussen
Aussie Internet Marketer
Learn Affiliate Marketing with Year Of The Affiliate © 2012
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Sean,
Congratulations! and a fantastic intro……
You said, “These tools also have a business intelligence element that allow you to extract data that could help you be more successful”
I appreciate you taking the time to share the vast knowledge on internet affiliate marketing and Social Media that you so obviously have.
I’ll be RSS ing this…for sure! lol Thanks!
No problem Jill, I love to share my knowledge, and I love it even more when people take the time to read it and use it to their advantage
Happy RSS’ing!
Hi Sean
Isn’t social media amazing? Business owners who think it’s just about updating people on what you have for lunch, are prejudging it and writing it off to their detriment. Great for marketing, but – as you say – just great for having fun and staying connected.
Lina
.-= Lina Nguyen´s last blog ..The Real New York – Letter from an old friend =-.
Anything that can be beneficial to business and lots of fun at the same time is a winner in my books Lina
Hi Sean,
You’ll be a lot more effective marketing your affiliate products if you harness the power of social media. Social media sites allow you to connect with your customers and other people who might be interested in your product.
The key is to connect with your audience. You have to make an effort to engage your friends and followers. The whole point is to build relationships with people. You want to give people a reason to check out your profile and any articles and links you share.
I still have so much to learn about how to actually do this.
.-= Jazz Salinger´s last blog ..Learn and Earn – It’s a Marathon Not a Sprint =-.
Hi Sean,
I was one of the many that saw social media as something very strange, updating people on what they had for lunch or that they are going to bed now.
But either it’s me learning a lot or it’s a lot of other people as well starting to use social media in a different way – I now see the advantages and possibilities they offer for marketing of your products, affiliate and otherwise. And I am learning how to use them to my advantage
.-= Renee´s last blog ..Overcoming Procrastination =-.
Hi Renee,
I still find it a little strange. I never quite get what the point is of having so many friends and followers I don’t even talk to. Sometimes, these new people become friends.
More often than not they just sit on my profile as a number. You’d think it would be better to have 100 people you regularly talk to than 1000 followers. Still, for affiliate marketing purposes, I guess the more people that see what you’re offering the better.
.-= Jazz Salinger´s last blog ..Finding Your Passion =-.
Hi Sean,
The article has great value in me rereading it as well as sharing with friends. Thank-you again, Sean.
Twitter comes to mind as being the most valuable Social Media tool for Affiliate Marketers. The fast growing rate of Twitter users indicates that many people are thinking the same and that they are using Twitter for many reasons besides marketing puropses.
As this article suggests – there is a growing number of Social Media sites available. This is good news for Affiliate Marketers. Not only can users have fun by meeting like minded people, we can also create links and generate traffic to our latest product or blog site.
.-= Jill Brown´s last blog ..Couples Marry at Common Law =-.
Social Media is such a useful tool and there is so much to learn about using it effectively. Building relationships is a crucial aspect of gaining respect and thus people who trust you even if they don’t know you personally. Combining social media with affiliate marketing is an exciting combination.
.-= Melanie Braggs´s last blog ..Building Chicken Coops =-.
Thanks for differentiating the jobs each social media site does. With so many of them out there it gets confusing what each site is used for. Affiliate marketing with socia media is a very exciting concept which I definately under use.
.-= Jackie Stenhouse´s last blog ..Types of Child Anxiety Disorder =-.
I only recently signed up to friendfeed and I have found it very interesting. The problem that I continue to run into now is that there are so many social networks it makes it difficult to actually engage with all of them.
Using software tools does help to manage multiple Twitter accounts, but it still seems to be such a drain on my time.
.-= Cemil´s last blog ..Skills Of An Internet Entrepreneur =-.
It can definitely be a challenge to keep up with multiple social media sites and find the time to engage with other users on all of them. The best thing to do is find the ones you like and those you feel will be most beneficial and put the most effort into those on a continual basis.
Hi Cemil,
I too have wandered about how to keep up with them all as I have experimented using Ping.fm & signing up to all the services to mass post but as for actually monitoring each different site for replies & messages… I guess I have a lot to learn! : )
.-= jeremy´s last blog ..jlagatule- RT @tonyrobbins For you night owls still upCome be the first to have a sneak peak of R Breakthrough insiders site http-bitly-caSRxw =-.
Hi Sean,
Using affiliate marketing with social media is a great way to generate leads, sales & clicks to whatever it is you are selling & I have used Facebook in particular for a few successful little experiments.
I’ve also learnt some lessons on how not to use affiliate marketing on social media sites as they will disable you account if you don’t play by their rules.
.-= jeremy´s last blog ..jlagatule- RT @tonyrobbins For you night owls still upCome be the first to have a sneak peak of R Breakthrough insiders site http-bitly-caSRxw =-.
It’s always wise to play by the rules and read the terms and conditions of each site, just to be safe Jeremy
. Great to hear you have learned from a couple of mistakes.