The concept of affiliate marketing is simple. Through affiliate marketing, your brand or representatives for your brand promote a product or service. Individuals then earn a commission on each sale they help drive. Affiliate marketing is extremely popular and is currently one of the biggest advertising channels for many businesses. Social media has played a huge role in helping increase the popularity and success of affiliate marketing.
As the world’s largest social media platform, Facebook is a fantastic way to do affiliate marketing. Billions of people access Facebook every month. The likelihood of your target market being on this social media platform is very high. Creating a business Facebook page or group will help you target your desired audience. This is an easy and free way to grow your fan base and increase the level of interest in what you are selling.
Establish yourself as an authority figure on Facebook and build relationships with your audience. Create as much value for your audience as possible. The 80/20 rule is a great method to follow: 80% of your posts should be educational, entertaining, and shareable, 20% of your posts should be promotional. This will help you achieve higher customer conversion rates and reach your audience more effectively.
Twitter is another highly influential social media platform, but it’s focus is a little different than Facebook. Twitter is a news and social networking platform that focuses on writing short messages called “tweets”. Tweeting has a character limit of 280 which is great for readability and encourages creative use of language. Because of the nature of Twitter, before beginning affiliate marketing on Twitter, it is important to define your goals. Do you want to increase brand awareness? Get more leads? Build long-lasting relationships? Increase loyalty you’re your brand?
Make your objective clear in your Twitter Bio then align it with the content you post. Twitter is the perfect platform for interacting with and building relationships. Find relevant Twitter threads and jump into the conversations. Engaging with other people will help build relationships, increase followers, and expand your brand’s visibility.
Originally Instagram was a photo-based platform. Now mixing photo, video, short stories, and comments, Instagram has opened many doors for brands and influencers to work creatively together. Instagram is the #1 social media platform used by brands for their influencer campaigns. Brands can reach out to influencers and offer a commission on each sale they refer back to the brand’s website.
Using influencers is mutually beneficial for maximizing sales. Using influencers to help market brands helps increase engagement levels and revenue, and helps build lasting relationships between influencers and the brand. Influencers have a more direct connection to new audience members that businesses might not otherwise reach. They add authenticity to products with pictures, videos, and honest reviews. In exchange, the influencer is compensated by the business for the customers they convert.
Snapchat
Many social media platforms place limits on the inclusion of affiliate links. Snapchat is advantageous because there is no limit. Snapchat allows you to place direct affiliate links with anything you post. You don’t need a certain follower count to do it. Snapchat lets you post affiliate links in snaps sent to your followers, Snapchat stories, and one-on-one chats. Simply click the “link” button on the snap you’d like to send, search for your specific URL, then tap to include it in your post.
Having the ability to promote links at scale through regular posts, stories, and direct messaging gives you more diverse ways to get in front of potential customers. Keep your snaps clean, engaging, easy to understand, and have your call to action short and sweet. This will increase the level of impact you have on the Snapchat platform.
TikTok
It is no secret that TikTok is the “next big thing”. TikTok was one of the top social media platforms of 2021. It’s a video-based platform that allows individuals to create short videos and share them publicly. The intimate nature of this social media platform is ideal for encouraging affiliate sales. The short video format of TikTok helps you demonstrate products in real-time. Being able to visually showcase a product is very impactful for viewers.
TikTok is great for helping to build the trust and authority for your brand. TikTok business accounts also let you include affiliate links in your video descriptions. With the casual tone and short-form videos that TikTok encourages, you can produce a large amount of content for a relatively small investment. With low investment and high output, leveraging TikTok to promote your product will be a sure way to increase your revenue.
With over 322 million monthly active users, Pinterest represents a huge opportunity for building up a recurring revenue stream from affiliate marketing. Pinterest is known to drive visitors to websites daily. When visitors from Pinterest click on your pinned images, they are directed to the website of the business you’ve partnered with, directly boosting your affiliate sales.
When using Pinterest, you must prioritize long term results. Pinterest is one of the best ways to build your affiliate marketing because pins have a long shelf life. A pin can stay relevant for months, even years. Create multiple pins for each piece of content. You can create anywhere from 3-10 pins per blog post. Multiple pin images for a website post that gets pinned on Pinterest will draw more viewers to the website. Pinterest is an excellent way for you to directly influence the traffic drawn to the product you’re an affiliate for.
LinkedIn is best described as a social network for professionals. LinkedIn is currently used as a promotional channel for businesses, freelancers, and potential employees. With so many active users, LinkedIn has an impressive engagement rate. Increased engagement makes this an ideal platform for marketing. Whether you are marketing yourself, a product, or a business, LinkedIn makes it easy to interact with various professional groups on all different levels.
LinkedIn contains a blogging-style format where you can post articles, job updates, posts, opinion articles, images, videos, presentation slides and so much more. These features are shareable throughout your network and beyond. LinkedIn also focuses on individual relationships through personal pages, comments, and direct messaging. Let LinkedIn promote your services by connecting you with professionals and individuals interested in your area of expertise and the products and businesses you’re an affiliate for.
YouTube
YouTube is the second most visited website on the internet (the first is Google). As an extended video platform, YouTube is the perfect place to showcase creativity. Using videos, you can provide extra value to your audience with affiliate marketing. While YouTube provides a variety of built-in ways to monetize your content, affiliate marketing will give you direct control over what products you promote. Affiliate marketing tactics will also enable you to see more of the profits you generate.
YouTube enables you to monetize your videos by running ads before and during your video runtime. However, another way to earn money is to incorporate affiliate links alongside your content. Every time a viewer uses your links to buy something, you’ll earn a commission. Driving traffic to your site requires creating relevant and engaging content. You cannot promote a product if there are no viewers to consume it. When creating videos, include links in your video descriptions. You can also embed them in your videos that will take the user directly to your site. Capitalizing on this platform will give your viewers a detailed description of your product and easy access to purchasing it.
Reddit does not allow the placement of direct affiliate links. This does not mean that you cannot execute an affiliate marketing strategy on Reddit. Instead, you must take a creative approach to direct traffic to the products you promote. For example, you can set up a landing page that directs traffic from Reddit to your blog article where you place your affiliate links. You can also use paid advertisements to direct paid traffic from Reddit. Reddit is community-driven and thrives on shareability. Create content that users can share and instigate increased traffic flow to your site.
WhatsApp is primarily a messaging platform owned and operated by Facebook. WhatsApp is a big platform for brand promotion and running ads. All you have to do is gather contact details of potential customers and share links for the products you are marketing. Reach a broad audience on an individual basis by communicating with them one-on-one to share your affiliate links.
Affiliate marketing works so well because of the networking that is involved to make campaigns successful. By collaborating with other professionals, it is easier for businesses to reach niche audiences that would not otherwise be aware of their brand. Use social media platforms as an affiliate marketer to help you tap into unique groups and increase your revenue.
Not sure where to start? No problem, check out this article for the beginning steps of how to get into affiliate marketing.
