How To Successfully Market Affiliate Products with Social Networking

Social networking is being used by marketers all around the world to build their businesses. It’s a great way to connect with your audience and form a personal connection. It’s a fantastic way to increase awareness and exposure and it’s a wonderful way to drive traffic to your website. If you’re an affiliate marketer and are not using social networking to build your income, maybe it’s time to take a second look. 
Here’s how to successfully market affiliate products with social networking.

#1  Join social networking sites where your audience hangs out. If you’re marketing to a young audience, then consider Twitter, MySpace and other websites where they’re going to be. Marketing to moms?  What about Twittermoms?  
#2  Create a profile and begin interacting. Make sure your profile contains your website address, people will check you out and that’s all new traffic. Connect, follow, and have conversations with other social networking members. Do not, at this point, market products or services. Just connect and build a following. You can and should post helpful and valuable information, spark discussion about industry topics and ask questions. 
#3  Once you feel you’ve build a solid foundation of followers and connections, it’s time to start marketing. How?  By creating great content and linking to it. People don’t want to see advertisements and blatant promotions. However you as an affiliate marketer already know that it’s not the advertisements that sell your products, it’s the valuable content with text links that sells your products. IT’s the reviews, lists and informational articles that sell products. Linking to your valuable content will always be appreciated. 
#4  Sneak in the occasional promotion. It’s okay to occasionally slip in the blatant promotion. For example, let’s say you’re an affiliate for Amazon and you want to make some money on a new book. You can post something like “just read NAME OF BOOK and it was fantastic” and then include your affiliate link. Don’t get carried away with this strategy and test and track it for results. If you find you have 10 unfollows after a post like that and no sales or click throughs then it’s not working. But 10 unfollows and 10 sales, the income gain may be worth the loss of followers. 
#5  Always represent yourself in a manner in which you want to be perceived. If your audience is sensitive to swearing, then don’t swear. It seems easy however ‘social networking’ doesn’t mean chatting about your personal life, unless it relates to your industry and/or helps you connect with your audience.
Social networking, when it’s done right, can be a fantastic way to boost your affiliate marketing business. Continue to create valuable content and market it via your chosen social networking sites, connect with your audience and have fun!
