Online Marketing tips from Click Kingdom
Social Media Marketing – CREATING PERSONAL CONNECTIONS…
Generally, consumers are pretty savvy. They know when they are being directly marketed, and usually, they resent it. Using Social Media Marketing (SMM) strategies to promote your affiliate links can be a wonderfully subtle, and indirect, way of strongly promoting your domain and creating a steady flow of web traffic to your affiliates.
But be careful! Social media marketing only works if you are able to establish a genuine and personal connection with users. Social Media is hugely popular and, if used strategically, has the ability to transform your business and rapidly expand your affiliate traffic.
WHAT IS SOCIAL MEDIA?
Social media is a powerful tool that you can use to create a domain PRESENCE, MONITOR consumer trends and CONNECT with a wide consumer base. Social Media includes –
- Social Networks – Facebook, MySpace
- Microblogging – Twitter
- Blogging – Blogspot
- Media Sharing – YouTube, Flickr
IS SOCIAL MEDIA HERE TO STAY?
Social Media Marketing, SMM, is an area of digital marketing that is literally exploding. The majority of all large companies devote a massive 40% of their advertising budget to digital campaigns and for small business this figure is even higher.
Erik Qualman, in his excellent article ‘Statistics Show Social Media is Bigger Than You Think’ compares the rise of social media with the Industrial Revolution. According to Qualman, “Social media represents a fundamental shift in the way people communicate, it is transforming the world”.
THE FACTS…
1 BILLION … … Internet Users globally
250 MILLION … … Facebook users
200 MILLION … … Blogs posted
18 MILLION … … Twitter users
HOW DO I USE SOCIAL MEDIA FOR AFFILLIATE MARKETING?
The cornerstones of any social media marketing strategy should be making personal connections, sharing real life experiences and following a genuine community-based approach.
- PERSONAL CONNECTIONS
- REAL LIFE EXPERIENCES
- CREATING A COMMUNITY
The core essence of social media is the virtual conversation. You simply cannot come at social media from a hard marketing perspective. You will alienate, and bore, your audience. They will switch of and skim to the next interesting and informative link or post.
If you are blogging, or tweeting or video sharing, you need to be able to create a personal connection with your audience. And there is a sure fire way to do this. Be genuine. Follow the following principles:
1. Write about what you know
2. Relate your product to your actual life experiences
3. Expose your values, beliefs and culture
4. Think outside the box
5. Think laterally
6. Explore hot topics, burning social issues and newsworthy items
7. Share useful, funny and informative information
HOW CAN SOCIAL MEDIA CREATE AFFILIATE CONNECTIONS?
You can use social media to drive web traffic to your affiliate links and to create a virtual following to penetrate your chosen market.
Social Media is a highly effective way of vividly capturing the attention of your target audience.
YouTube
The idea here is to do a short product review or ‘How To…’. YouTube allows you to place a URL in the description box of your video clip. This will allow you to direct the viewer of your YouTube video to your main domain, and then onwards to your affiliate.
STEP 1 – Create YouTube Product Review or How To…
STEP 2 – Insert a link to your domain
STEP 3 – Redirect traffic to your affiliate
Flickr
Create a Flickr pro account. Cost = $30 per year. The idea here is to upload pictures of products. The description box accepts URL so you can put your affiliate link in the description box. If someone is searching on Google for a particular product, your image will come up in the search response. Images jump out at the user more than text, so they may click on your picture.
STEP 1 User performs Google search – e.g. Black tie
STEP 2 Your image comes up
STEP 3 User clicks on picture of you wearing the black tie
STEP 4 User follows your URL link to affiliate to buy tie
A Tweet is an extremely short ‘micro’ blog. You are limited to 140 characters. The idea here is to create a following by making personal and genuine connections with your audience. You can place your links in Twitter and connect them to your blog. Don’t just advertise, think of a short and catchy tweet and then connect the user to your affiliate link further down the track.
STEP 1 Create short ‘tweet’
STEP 2 Build a following by connecting with your audience
STEP 3 Insert affiliate link
SOCIAL MEDIA CONNECTIONS…
Social media is about the process more than the destination.
Although you hope that ultimately your user will take a look at your affiliate links, this should not be your main goal. It is ultimately the virtual experience that you create for your user that counts.
Take them on a visual journey, get their interest, and make them want to return to your social media spots. People need to care about, and be interested in, the content of your social media topic. If you can build real and personal connections you will be able to increase traffic to your affiliates, make your user happy and make money!
Originally posted 2010-01-04 22:08:00.
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Thanks for the mention…crazy to think we are up to 350 million FB users now!
Best, Erik Qualman
Author of Socialnomics