How to Use Social Media for Affiliate Marketing
Digistore24 has put together an easily-digestible
guide on how to use social media for affiliate
marketing, so affiliates like you can have
convenient access to key information if you want to
get started right away on your affiliate journey.
How to Use Social Media for Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is the type of business that
anyone can get into fairly quickly and easily, even
with having little to no experience in this
industry. And now more than ever, social media has
made it even easier to get started and tap into
audiences across the entire planet almost
effortlessly. You no longer need to run an elaborate
affiliate website and have a blog with huge
recognition in order to make money as an affiliate
marketer. All you need to do is browse a few
affiliate networks, pick one that fits your needs,
choose some affiliate offers, and proceed to using
social media.
To achieve success, you need to leverage the power
of social media and use every platform available to
promote offers, attract loyal customers, provide
quality content, as well as engage with your
followers in creative ways. From giveaways to
contests, live streams and takeovers, possibilities
of forming authentic connections with your target
audience are limitless. And by being both free and
user-friendly, many social media platforms have
become the go-to for affiliate marketers when
starting out.
Get Started with Using Social Media for Affiliate
Marketing
According to a Statista report published at the
beginning of 2022, over 3.6 billion people were
using social media worldwide back in 2020, and this
number is projected to increase to almost 4.4
billion by 2025. Basically, these numbers speak for
themselves. And we’re guessing you're interested in
tapping into this large pool of users, but don’t
actually know where to start.
Luckily, we put together an easily-digestible &
actionable guide on how to use social media for
How NOT to Use Social Media for Affiliate Marketing
Before we go into more details, let’s put some
misconceptions to rest about social media.
Regardless of what you might have previously heard,
promoting offers on social platforms such as
Facebook, Instagram or TikTok isn’t just mindlessly
spamming your followers with affiliate links.
No matter what social media platform you’re using,
you need to create a solid strategy before even
considering posting anything. You might be familiar
with some channels, and even use some in your day-
to-day activities, however, running a business
account is totally different than just simply having
a personal account.
So, to avoid making unnecessary mistakes and
proceeding to post without having a proper strategy,
review the upcoming key steps in this article and
learn how to build a successful affiliate marketing
plan through social media.
The Best Ways to Use Social Media for Affiliate
The first thing you need in order to get started is
to pick your social media channel(s).
But before that, make sure you already picked a
niche, an affiliate network with a good marketplace,
like the Digistore24 Marketplace, and most
importantly, that you’re somewhat familiar with how
affiliate marketing works.
Being part of a great affiliate program is a good
starting point - all you need to do now is learn how
to properly place your affiliate link across
different social media platforms. But don’t worry,
we’ve got you covered!
1. Choose Your Social Media Platform(s) Carefully
Thankfully, there are a variety of options to choose
from, so let’s go over a few and see which are the
best social media channels for affiliate marketers.
Picking the right social media platform when you’re
just starting out can make a world of difference.
Arguably one of the most popular social media
platforms on the internet, Facebook is a great space
for promoting offers. Jumping on Facebook is pretty
straightforward, and chances are, you already have
an account, and if not, you can easily create one
here. Even if you do have an account, we recommend
sometimes creating a new one for your brand.
Affiliate marketers can create a business account or
a personal account. With a personal account, you can
build a “Friends” list and add people who you think
could be interested in the content you’re creating
and offers you’re promoting. Affiliates can also
join groups and add value to the community with
social media posts, while selectively including an
affiliate link here and there when a certain level
of trust has been established.
You can also create content with a business account,
but you’ll have to create an ad budget for running
ads because reaching people organically will be
difficult. You can choose to run different types of
ads and get creative with videos or stories by using
the Meta Business Suite.
Either way, with over 2.9 billion monthly active
users, you can pretty much tap into any audience in
the world, and target any age group, location or
interests on Facebook.
Instagram has over 1 billion users and presents a
huge potential for promoting affiliate offers. The
best thing about Instagram is that the platform’s
algorithm can work in your favor, especially if your
content is on point. Instagram is super accurate in
showing users exactly what they want to see,
however, Instagram is highly competitive, so you
need to stand out with your content.
Build a solid profile, post valuable content
consistently, and make sure everything is visually
pleasing and stands out. Engage with your target
audience through Stories or live streams, and strive
to build a loyal following. You can also run ads on
Instagram through the Meta Business Suite, so both
organic and paid advertising options should be
considered.
If you want to tap into the Millenial and Gen-Z
audience, Instagram is the place to be.
TikTok
TikTok is (almost) all about the Gen-Zers. You can
still find other generations on the platform,
however, young people are predominant. That’s why
your marketing efforts here should be extra
polished. TikTok is a great place to promote offers
and attract new customers. The channel gives you the
opportunity to create short videos that have the
potential to reach thousands of users, without you
even having an immense following.
If your content is well-done, relevant and helpful,
the algorithm will work in your favor. If you’re
creative and like making short, fun and easily
digestible videos, you should definitely give TikTok
a try.
We actually talked about how Pinterest is a unique
social media platform for affiliates in one of our
previous articles: the best traffic sources in
affiliate marketing. This hybrid space that is half
social media, half search engine used mostly for
inspiration. As an affiliate, all you need to do is
create a few Boards, populate them with Pins and
link the photos to one of your landing pages.
The audience on Pinterest is predominantly women of
all ages and young men.
Another hybrid platform is Reddit. Reddit is
considered a social media platform but acts like a
forum. If you want to create a social media strategy
on Reddit, you need to become part of the online
communities, aka subreddits. Start off by providing
engaging content, answering questions, and then
slowly start marketing offers.
The audience on Reddit is super diverse. You can
find pretty much every age group scattered across
multiple subreddits.
Having a Twitter account and posting affiliate links
sounds super easy, but unfortunately, it isn’t. Same
thing applies here too as with the rest of the
platforms: to have success, you first need to build
a respectable Twitter account, provide value, and
only then start trying to sell affiliate products to
your audience.
2. Create High-Quality Content
We briefly mentioned a few tips and tricks about
content in the previous section, however, we cannot
stress this enough… Creating engaging content is one
of the key elements of having success with affiliate
marketing on social media. Build your content around
your preferred niche, and always try to seamlessly
integrate your informative content with your
marketing.
Each social media platform comes with its own
characteristics, so investing time to learn how
these online environments work can definitely pay
off both in the short and long term. Whether you’re
posting photos, long-form affiliate marketing posts,
short copy or review videos, ensure everything is
skillfully crafted and entices your target audience
to interact with you and your brand.
3. Take Time to Really Know Your Target Audience
Each platform has a diverse pool of members, ranging
from Gen-Zers to Millennials and even Baby Boomers.
Let’s say, for example, you're promoting personal
development offers. These types of offers do well
with younger traffic that can be found on TikTok and
Instagram. If you’re looking to promote survival
offers, for instance, your best bet is going on
Facebook and targeting the older generations.
Furthermore, get in touch with macro or micro
influencers who promote affiliate offers on a daily
basis and get some tips on how to connect with your
target audience better. They might even give you
tips on how to work with a referral link. And who
knows… If you build up a large enough following, you
can also take the influencer route.
4. Get Good at Working with Ads
To have success with your affiliate marketing
campaigns, you might need to get good at working
with ads. When creating ads, the key demographics
you should focus on are location, gender, age and
interests. The trick is to accurately identify the
people that might be interested in what you’re
promoting, and successfully target them with
strategically placed ads.
Social media ads can show up in a person’s feed,
stories, and more. Whichever space you choose to run
ads in, make sure the creative fits in seamlessly.
Furthermore, remember to always keep an eye on
performance, and tweak your ads accordingly. When
you’re first starting out, you’ll be spending a
great chunk of your time just testing different
approaches with ads, so be patient and don’t give
in.
Effective affiliate marketing campaigns don’t just
happen overnight, but check out a few pointers that
could speed up the process:
If the offer you’re promoting can be presented with
the help of great visual content, Instagram and
Pinterest are the best social media platforms to run
your ads on.
Video content performs well on Instagram and
Facebook, and of course, YouTube - so if you’re
feeling creative, it’s worth putting together a few
video ads and testing them out on different
platforms.
If you’re a good writer and think you can persuade
people with great copy, try writing compelling ads
on platforms like Reddit and Facebook to draw in
potential customers.
Paid ads, paid searches and social display ads can
bring you a lot of traffic, so make sure you utilize
every tool in the shed to create the best possible
ad creatives.
5. Always Be Optimizing…
Lastly, pay attention to how your content performs
across every social media channel.
Overall, try to be engaging but don’t overdo things:
ideally, create a social media calendar and stick to
it. Consistency is key, and posting regularly should
be a priority. With organic social media posts, you
have to create a certain rhythm with your content
and avoid being chaotic.
Additionally, remember to mention offers you’re
promoting regularly, but don’t make a habit of
becoming annoying and spammy. On Pinterest, remember
to link every photo to a landing page, and on
Instagram, be sure to have a Linktree account set up
and added to your bio.
Lastly, connect with other fellow affiliates, and
exchange ideas, referral links, and discuss
strategies to keep finding new ways to promote
engaging content on social media.
The Best Social Media Tools For Affiliate Marketers
Apart from each social media platform's specific
scheduling and ad tools, here are a few apps you
should try out to improve your overall social media
strategy and affiliate marketing campaigns.
Before we jump into the list, we just want to touch
on something really quick…
As an affiliate marketer, sometimes it is expected
of you to do everything - create good content, run
ads, network and so on. But keep in mind that it’s
ok to ask for help, and don’t shy away from hiring a
few people to help you out if the workload is
starting to overwhelm you. And you need to start
somewhere.
Now, let’s see which are the top tools that can make
your life easier on social media.
Content Calendar & Social Media Management Tools
When it comes to social media, you need to be highly
organized. And the last thing you need is to log in
every day and manually post across different social
media platforms. That’s why you need platforms like
Hootsuite or Buffer. These tools can help you
schedule your affiliate marketing posts in advance
and have every post for every platform show up in a
single calendar.
Having a consistent stream of social media posts
ready to go out each week, or each month, depending
on how ahead you are with your content, is the
optimal strategy. However, don’t forget to actually
pop in every once in a while on the actual social
pages to answer comments and see how your affiliate
marketing posts are doing.
Visual Content Creator Tools
For those popping visuals and high quality images,
you need a couple of resources that help boost your
creativity.
For creating unique graphics, you can give Canva a
try, and you can also check out Unsplash or Pexels
whenever you need to grab a few stock images. And
don’t worry if you’re on a tight budget; Unsplash
and Pexels are free, and Canva has a free trial
version available.
Analytics Tools
If you want to see how your affiliate marketing
campaigns are performing, make sure to review the
data on each social media channels’ analytics
dashboard... For extra info, you can also use Google
Analytics to track certain performance metrics, such
as traffic, ROI, conversions, and more. Tracking
links is also something you should look into.
Plus, if you want to improve your content and add a
little SEO into the mix, make sure to check out
SEMRush. Keyword research can play a huge role in
your content strategy, and SEMRush allows you to
research your competitors and see which keywords
people in the industry are ranking for.
Final Thoughts
So, these are all the tips and tricks on how to use
social media for affiliate marketing. You already
have the blueprint laid out right in front of you,
and now, all you need to do is follow these steps.
If you commit to your work, hopefully, you will
start seeing results sooner rather than later.
Work with one social media platform in the beginning
and expand to another later on - and most
importantly - make sure you crush it with your
content. Make sure you take the necessary time to
learn how ads work and utilize every resource
available on the internet that can improve your
work.
And remember, if things ever get too intense, don’t
hesitate to outsource some of your work.
Want to become a Digistore24 affiliate? Simply go
here to register for free.
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