Social Media Use in Affiliate Marketing

With millions of internet users spending a large percentage of their time online using social media websites, it is no surprise that affiliate marketers have tried to cash in on this eTrafficLane. According to reports from leading analytic firms on the internet, the majority of affiliate marketers are currently using social media as part of their marketing strategy. It is not so simple, however, and implementing a strategy on these types of networks is often more complicated than traditional search engine optimization.

For example, people are only likely to “share” and “like” information online if it is something with which they are comfortable associating themselves publicly. The bad news for affiliates is that many times they are promoting products to people who are only comfortable using the said product in private. Let’s say you are an affiliate dealing in the health niche and promoting a cure for acne intended for people with serious skin issues: this is not a product which people are likely to necessarily share on their Facebook wall or Pinterest profiles. This hold true for many popular niches that affiliates tend to gravitate towards, including products targeting the unemployed.

The key for affiliate marketers is to transform this information into something that is more likable and thus more likely to be shared via social media. With enough creativity, this can be done even for difficult niches like acne products or self-employment methods. You may have promote your products indirectly through a piece of advertising more readily attractive, but once you have the initial “likes” and “shares” you are well on your way to eventually reaching product commissions.

Unlike with traditional search engine optimization, it is often much more difficult to gauge the success of an affiliate marketing campaign via social media. As affiliate marketing becomes more prevalent on these types of websites, I imagine that tools will be developed that will help affiliate marketers track their social media campaigns just like they can now do via traditional search engine optimization.

One disadvantage of using social media websites for affiliate marketing is that the overwhelming majority of users do not use websites like Facebook or Pinterest as a medium to get informed about products they are interested in buying. These websites exist to share information mostly related to their private social lives, which is somewhat distinct from their behavior as a consumer. The tricky struggle for affiliate marketers is to convince a social media user that they should buy a product even while involved with lazy internet browsing and socializing.

It’s not all bad news, however, and there are some advantages for affiliates who are interested in tapping into social media. The greatest plus is that users often congregate on social media websites by the niches that interest them, and if you are able to network effectively, you can insert your product into the midst of extremely targeted eTrafficLane. This provides an incredible opportunity for affiliate marketers as they don’t have to go looking for their audience. With this in mind, there is understandably a lot of potential for online marketers when it comes to making use of social media, and we are likely to see more developments in the near future.