Another Reason to love Paid on Results
Written by Fraser Edwards in Affiliate Marketing on December 21, 2011
Hi,
On the 06th December a visitor to your website clicked on an Affiliate URL
for a Merchant who has closed its Affiliate Program with Paid On Results.The visitor was shown our Expired Links page, and given several other
related Merchants they may be interested in. This visitor followed one of
our related links and went onto make a purchase with Find Me A Gift.Normally the commission due would just be added to your account, however
in this case you are currently not an Affiliate of Find Me A Gift. In
order for us to pass the commission onto you we first need you to join the
Find Me A Gift Affiliate ProgramYou can do this as normal though your Affiliate Control Panel, once you
have joined and been approved for this Merchant we will add the commission
due to you into your account.If you have any questions please let us know.
Best Wishes,
Paid On Results Support Team.
Great use of technology to do something to reach a good outcome from an expired link. When the other options are sending the visitor through anyway or landing them on error page actually putting a solution in place that allows me to earn and another merchant to make the sale is fantastic. 
ThirstyAffiliates Plugin – Josh Kohlbach Interview
Written by Fraser Edwards in Affiliate Marketing on December 1, 2011
A while back Josh Kahlbach got in touch to show me the ThirstyAffiliates WordPress plugin. I’m using it on one of my sites now so I sent Josh back some questions and here are his answers…
Tell us a bit about yourself?
Hi, I’m Josh Kohlbach, I’m a programmer from Brisbane, Australia. I’m the creator of ThirstyAffiliates affiliate link management plugin for WordPress as well as a handful of other non-premium plugins.
A bit about me?… Hrm, I’ve been into programming since I was about 13 years old (now 26), I have a degree in IT, and I’ve been studying business and marketing in my spare time for about the past 3 or 4 years.
What’s the idea behind this plugin?
The idea behind ThirstyAffiliates is quite simple and I’ve designed it to be a helpful and un-intrusive part of your affiliate marketing workflow.
I came up with the idea of an affiliate link manager after getting frustrated with having to create reviews for a computer hardware review site I was making and not being able to really track where my affiliate links were being used.
After a few times of needing to change one of my affiliate links and tracking down where I used that link in the past I finally did something about it.
Why your plugin and not others which have similar functions?
When I created ThirstyAffiliates I was actually looking for a plugin similar to mine to purchase. But everything in the industry was just so focused on cloaking and being deceptive by keyword link generation all over your blog. It just seemed like there was no tool that really focused on managing the links like assets.
My tool puts the focus on managing affiliate links in one place and providing a really great interface for getting those links into your posts and pages.
I’ve actually crafted a specialised link picker tool just for that. Most other plugins just give you a list of your links to insert or a nasty shortcode to remember which is absolutely useless once you have 100+ links. You really need a proper tool once you’re getting serious about affiliate marketing with more than the odd link here and there.
My plugin also does importing and exporting using the WordPress importer tool which means that you can setup your links once and import them to new websites you’re creating, saving hours of setup.
What other wordpress plugins do you recommend for affiliate marketing?
There are some really great review website plugins out there. If I was making a dedicated reviews website again I’d definitely look into purchasing a premium review plugin. Especially one that gets the social side of things going with user reviews.
Also, not really a plugin, but there’s heaps of great integrations with mailing list providers like MailChimp and Aweber. Drop in their plugin and activate a widget – building a mailing list doesn’t need to be difficult, but it’s something every affiliate should be doing as the engagement on that platform is a lot higher.
Thanks Josh
Interview With Mark Bowness Of Big British Giveaway
Written by Jason Dale in Affiliate Marketing on November 24, 2011
At Loquax we get to see a lot of different new sites and new competition ideas. One that caught our eye recently was Big British Giveaway – a forthcoming daily prize site that allows brands/retailers/sites/individuals to get themselves in front of a captive audience for 24 hours. A number of days have already been bought – including one by affiliate favourites Prezzybox! What makes ‘Giveaway more intriguing is that the man behind it, Mark Bowness, is launching in The USA and Australia at the same time.
Mark is no stranger to “big ideas” so I caught up with him to find out more – here’s what he has to say!
1. Tell Me A Little About Yourself?
Some would say I am a dreamer, no, literally, the would. I am an entrepreneur who loves coming up with the most crazy random ideas in order to see whether they can be turned into reality. Most people sit at the pub and discuss, ‘what if ideas’. I am the type of guy who discusses them and then risk everything in order to see if I can turn them into reality.
My first ‘big idea’ was a business called Tribewanted.com. I leased a 200 acre island in Fiji which had nothing on it. I built a website that enabled people to sign up and become a ‘virtual tribe members’, online these ‘tribe members’ voted on what they wanted to see happen on the island, what they wanted to build and how they wanted to work with the Fijians, members could then go and visit the island and get involved in building and developing the eco-village. Tribewanted was featured in the media around the world including ‘Good Morning America’, the ‘Today Show’ and ‘The New York Times’, it was even featured on ITV’s ‘This Morning!’ Tribewanted was filmed for 18 months and became a 5 part prime time BBC2 show.
2. What’s The Big British Giveaway All About?
Big British Giveaway is a daily giveaway site. Every single day, in 10 cities, in 2012, businesses will offer a product as a giveaway. In order to enter the giveaway the public have to like the brand on Facebook, Follow the brand on Twitter and engage with the brand all over the web. This means that, for your chosen 24 hour period, an online social army of brand champions will be raising your profile to all their friends, family and followers which will leave a lasting legacy of a positive digital footprint about your brand, online.
3. How Can Retailers/Affiliates Get Involved With ‘Giveaway?
Quite easily, all you have to do is head over to www.bigbritishgiveaway.com, select your city and your chosen day and reserve your giveaway day. Simple. Once you have done this we will send you an email asking you to answer a small number of questions and we will use the answers to create your giveaway day text which you will approve before you go live.
4. What’s In It For Them?
Most businesses are on Facebook or Twitter but they either don’t know what to do with these social media profiles or they find it hard to know how to attract a significant audience. Once a brand reserves their giveaway day we will create a specific campaign designed to the needs of your business – you may want to increase the number of Twitter followers you have, or the number of likes that you have on Facebook, you may even want 100′s of people to send out a tweet with your twitter profile link in it – we can do any of these and more!
On your giveaway day your campaign will go live and your brand will be seen by 1000′s of people across the internet, enabling you to reach potential new clients, attracting new followers to your Twitter and new fans to your Facebook, we can even ask people to enter their email it your email database. The members of the public who like, follow or enter their email address want to because they like your brand and therefore you will have gained a targeted audience who you can promote your products to and turn into customers.
5. What’s The Cost/Catch?
Big British Giveaway is a seriously affordable marketing platform. Day 1 is £1 and prices increase by only £1 per day. So, the 1st January is £1, 2nd January is £2 and the 31st December is £366 which is the most that any business will be able to pay next year.
Furthermore, on your giveaway day, alongside a description of your company and information of the product that you are going to giveaway you will also have the opportunity to offer a discount code. With all the exposure that you are getting on your giveaway day you will be able to maximise this opportunity and turn these eyeballs into customers by offering an incentive of a small discount.
6. What Happens If You Don’t Fill The Calendar On A Given Day?
Big British Giveaway launched in the UK only a matter of weeks ago, the American version launched 2 months ago and already we have sold over 1000 giveaway days. I am confident that with the PR exposure that is about to ramp up, we will sell all giveaway days. Furthermore, the cost of the days are so cost effective that it simply makes sense for business owners to make the most of this opportunity.
7. You’re Launching In USA/Australia/UK at the same time – Isn’t That A Bit Mad?
Yes, it is slightly! We launched in the USA (Big American Giveaway) which went down really well, selling over 1000 days within 2 months. As this success has grown and developed we have had enough interest from business owners and the public in both the UK and Australia (Big Aussie Giveaway) requesting that we launch in each of these countries and so we did. The reality is that I have a great team around me and it is not that much more effort launching in three countries as it is launching in one! Furthermore, whilst we have launched in all 50 states in the USA, we are initially launching in 10 cities in the UK and 4 locations in Australia so we are going to build these two countries slowly but surely. I am confident that we can build a strong, successful platform that we can roll out in a number of countries, well, that is the dream anyway!
8. What’s Your Top Tip For Start Ups?
Never fear failure. I have this belief that, in houses across the UK, there are latent future business leaders who will could make world changing products if only they were not afraid of failure. If a business is launched that does not work out, learn from the experience and come up with a new idea, use your experience to improve the next idea and keep going until you create the business that breaks through, if you keep going long enough, you will succeed.
A big thanks to Mark for taking part in the interview! 2012 promises to be a busy year for Mark and I’ll be watching with interest, from a competition point of view and business point of view, how the Big Giveaway sites develop.
To find out more head on over to Big British Giveaway.
Learning From Affiliate Christmas Past
Written by Jason Dale in Affiliate Marketing on November 16, 2011
Way back in the day we launched a festive shopping site called Xmastime. It still ranks, it still gets some traffic and over the years it’s had various refits. This year we’ve not touched it – no time and no inclination are perhaps the best reasons. Trying to guess what others want for Christmas whilst losing the will to live due to the lack of festive banners from merchants is not a good combo.
Planning For Affiliate Christmas
If you are running something Christmassy (and we are doing some stuff over on Loquax) then a few hints and tips never go amiss. Over on A4U they’re publishing hints and tips for affiliates from networks (Part 1, Part 2). That’s all well and good and very useful, but from an affiliate point of view should you be dropping everything in favour of the festive promotions and umpteen incentives that will be falling into your inbox.
Well I don’t think so… and rather than rewrite a whole new blog I’ve located my Planning For Affiliate Christmas blog from 2009. Hopefully it gives you a few useful bits of advice about jumping aboard Santa’s Sleighful of Incentives and Promotions for Affiliates (or Performance Marketeers).
Some Top Tips
The most important tips I can offer are be wary of the distraction Christmas can bring, be organised, and don’t be tempted to deviate too much from what you know. The endless emails of incentives, promos and commission chops and changes can be incredibly distracting – try and view them rationally and sensibly. A trip to Dubai might be a nice incentive, but is trying to win it at the expense of the last 11 months work? Just think about it!
By the same token, if you promote Widgets and Merchant X has been doing bumper Widget sales for you all year – now’s not the best time to test out Merchant Y and thrown Merchant X to the side. You might well find that Merchant X may offer you 5% commission and you get sales but Merchant Y may tempt you with 10% but sucks at conversion. Of course Y may just be a surprise – but if so why have they waited until now to get your business?
Organisation is also key to this time of year. To be honest Christmas Tips in mid-November is a little bit late in the day. Most affiliates looking to cash in will already be up and running (e.g. Quidco have had a Christmas countdown since the start of November – and that doesn’t organise itself overnight). You can still jump on board but try and fit Christmas in to what you do day to day.
Merchants, We Still Want Your Christmas Promos!
For us it’s not all bah humbug and Scrooge! Plenty of merchants run competitions around this time of year and if they get in touch with us with a little bit more detail then we’ll happily feature them on our blog – as we’ve done with John Lewis. It fits in with our site, has something that will interest our users and is great content. A perfect combo for us as an affiliate… and to be honest has more chance of generating a sale than if we spent the next few weeks updating Xmastime!
Any merchants/networks/AMs who want to know how they can get on to our blog then just get in touch… as long as there’s a competition angle we can use it!
Buyagift – Extra Long Life Cookies
Written by Fraser Edwards in Affiliate Marketing on November 16, 2011
I’ve posted before about this but take a look at these stats
Two sales from the same cookie which was placed on the 1st October 2006! More than 5 years ago I sent this visitor through and earlier this month they earned me £15. Now I know all the stats probably say that a huge majority of sales take place within the standard 28 day cookie but this shows that it’s certainly not all of the sales. Also note that the same click and cookie led to two sales. Not all programmes will have a cookie which is valid for multiple events. Many are for the first sale only.
Can anyone beat that time between click and sale? Most people would have been through a few computers in that time nevermind not having cleaned out your browser cache and cookies.
I used to have a lot of traffic that worked well for Buyagift and it seems I really should be trying to get that back again instead of chasing single action 28 day cookies. Just to be clear the cookie length for the Buyagift program is 9999 Days
Buyagift are on Affiliate Window and have an impressive Christmas incentive running at the moment.
An Affiliate Needs More Than Commission
Written by Fraser Edwards in Affiliate Marketing on November 10, 2011
This is one of only a handful of guest posts I’ve allowed on this blog. I’ve published this one because Finch knows what he is talking about. Check out Finch Sells. It’s full of great information, mainly about CPA offers. My only warning would be that the industrial language might offend some.
An Affiliate Needs More Than Commission
Fraser’s blog here was one of the first I read before carving out a career in affiliate marketing. My first dealings with the industry were purely voyeurism.
I would watch in wonder, sixteen tabs up during my lunch break, trying to understand how such a simple business model could provide such a fundamentally different work environment to my 9-5.
Three years on and my position is reversed. I now shoot off my own advice as a blogger and full-time affiliate.
I get to hear many questions from newbies trying to break in to the industry. The curiosity has grown, and grown. It seems everybody wants a piece of the affiliate marketing pie. But what about those who have been around the block for several years and have felt their love affair with the industry begin to wear off?
I think every affiliate, sooner or later, has to hit the wall.
When the thrill of earning ‘easy money’ wears off – at least, that’s what it’s called by my friends and family – the real challenge of staying motivated kicks in.
Being a middleman is a tough gig. How do you stay motivated without the pride of customers thanking you, or without the credit for driving a company to the next level? We are invisible, and with no attachment to what we sell other than the numbers on the cheques we receive.
I’ve battled for many months to conquer the overwhelming feeling of indifference. Truth be told, once the novelty of making good money wears off, it’s pretty tough to be satisfied – unless you’re working on projects that inspire something greater than financial security.
Clearly, an affiliate needs more than just commission to stay motivated.
It’s hard to get out of bed to work on a website if that website is only ever destined to satisfy a disconnected algorithm in Google’s underbelly. How do you motivate yourself to rank for products that, all commission aside, you barely give a rat’s arse about?
I think this is a problem many affiliate marketers face. They simply fall out of love with their projects. They don’t truly believe in them in the way that a driven entrepreneur should.
It’s one of the reasons so few of our projects ever come to fruition. If we don’t enjoy working on them, we can find plenty of reasons not to work on them. I know I can.
I believe I’ve created the world’s most emphatic repertoire of excuses to justify my own lackadaisical attitude to the websites I don’t like working on. Just last night the dog ate my FTP password.
Indifference, lack of passion, lack of excitement… call it whatever you want. We all need to engage in projects where there’s more than just a financial incentive, but something that gets us out of bed too.
And so, the number one piece of advice I give to new affiliates is pretty simple.
If you wouldn’t do exactly what you’re proposing for the reward of $0, then you probably shouldn’t do it at all. It’s passion and the desire to see projects through to their conclusion that separates the rich from the poor in our business. Do yourself a favour and work on something that gets you out of bed, or you’ll find yourself wishing you were back there long before lunch.
Football Manager 1 SEO Learning 0
Written by Jason Dale in Affiliate Marketing on November 10, 2011
Ok, it’s a been a while since I blogged on here but I do have a very good excuse. It’s Kelvin Newman’s fault! Kelvin did a talk on Football Manager/Championship manager at Think Visibility titled “What I Learnt About Search Playing Championship Manager”. You can check out the slides for this over at Slideshare.
Now I’ve not played Football Manager for some years now. To be honest Sensible Soccer on Sega Megadrive was the pinnacle of my football gaming ability so any games more complex tended to be quickly forgotten. That, and the fact that Southampton on these games were always crap (how things have now changed).
Anyway, Kelvin’s talk didn’t inspire me to get back in the Football Manager hotseat… it inspired Jude! Shortly after ThinkVis she was at the helm of Newport Country and frequently offering updates about overpaid footballers not doing what they should. She also kept asking me for advice on formations, who she should buy and whether these stats were good or bad. Like I would know! Anyway for a time I was “Director of Football” of Newport County … but that wasn’t exciting enough.
So before you know it I’m manager of Gateshead of the Blue Square Premier League and on course for becoming an SEO master (maybe). Season after season and hour after hour passed and before you know it Gateshead have made it to the Premier League care of a Johnstone Paint Trophy victory, a few Play-off near misses and just one relegation.
The FA Cup followed as did European Football, but the Premiership remained an elusive goal. In fact, it wasn’t until the 29th season when things started to unravel. Selling the England Captain for an astronomical fee to Arsenal unsettled the squad, they all got grumpy and just 8 months before Football Manager would retire me for being “too old”, the ungrateful Gateshead board fired me.
I’m still bitter about that!
Unfortunately all the above took up such a lot of time that blogging was shunted aside. I’m not even sure I know anything more about SEO. In fact I think my brain cells have been destroyed by the lack of sleep, the worry about players who were unsettled and trying to devise a plan to win the Premiership.
One thing that did resonate though was the strategy I adopted during the game. That strategy was to spend as little as possible and see how far things would go. Initially that was easy because the Gateshead Board didn’t have any cash. No players were loaned in for the entire game, and it was only until the final season when I blew £15million on a grumpy Scottish midfielder who’s tantrums contributed to me being sacked.
Now with Loquax the strategy has been quite similar, ok barring spending £15million on a midfielder – no idea what we’d do with him unless he knows SEO. But, you could say that doing silly things that may be outside your comfort zone is something to watch out for when doing stuff online.
Despite being slightly more affluent than we were in 1998, we’re still cash conscious and spending out a load of cash in search of glory may not result in taking honours. Perhaps there was a lesson in Football Manager after all?
Actually there’s another one – a more obvious one – and that’s be your own boss, because after sweating your nuts off for 29 years and delivering success above and beyond expectation there’s no grumpy board waiting to sack you without any warning.
Now! About this SEO stuff????
WordUp Edinburgh – The Plugin Report
Written by Fraser Edwards in Affiliate Marketing on November 1, 2011
photo by dmwmartin
A couple of weeks back I went along to WordUp Edinburgh which was an informal one day conference about WordPress. Organised by WPScotland it was a good day to see what everyone else is doing with WordPress. Talks ranged from WordPress in large companies through to voluntary organisations with a mixture of presentation and discussion.
I can’t add much to the many good reports about the conference already written but thought I would note some of the many plugins that were suggested throughout the day.
In no particular order….
For Theme Development and Testing
For Other Stuff….
- Custom Post Type UI – Making life easier for creating Custom Post types.
- Widget Logic – choose when you want your widgets to appear.
- Image Widget – Uploading images to widgets.
- Chimpexpress – Use existing content from your WordPress site to populate your latest Mailchimp newsletter.
- Mailpress – Similar to the above plugin but without using Mailchimp. Probably only suitable for smaller mailing lists.
- WP Help – Create help information as part of the WordPress dashboard. Ideal for handing over a site to a less experienced editor.
- EasyBlogging – Ideal interface for a new user by hiding away all the complicated stuff!
- Rolescoper – Better control over user roles for multi author blogs.
- Zend Gdata – Clever stuff this one. Allows you to link to data stored in Google Docs. I was shown this for linking rota data in a Google Docs Spreadsheet to the Adelaide Place Baptist Church website and I think it also has much wider potential use.
- ManageWP – This is the worker plugin for the main service at ManageWP. Recommended by both Wordskill & Canary Dwarf. Should make life easier for managing a number of different WP installs. I’m going to explore this one a bit further soon.
I’m sure there were many more plugins suggested as solutions to specific questions but that’s all I managed to scribble down over the course of the day
Should You Be Running A Facebook Competition?
Written by Jason Dale in Affiliate Marketing on September 12, 2011
Ask any social media person how you should go about getting more likes and followers on Facebook and it’s more than likely competitions will be mentioned. There’s no doubt that the lure of giving something away will attract plenty of followers, lots of “liked and shares” and links on lovely places such as Loquax. But time and time again, we see issues with brands and pages running Facebook competitions that land promoters right in the brown stuff!
So, before you run a Facebook competition – just have a quick read through – as we explain just some of the things that can crop up.
1. The Guidelines
Facebook does have guidelines for promoters who want to run competitions. It’s worth noting them “just in case”. For example the guidelines say that “the act of liking a Page or checking in to a Place cannot automatically register or enter a promotion participant”.
It also says that “you must not notify winners through Facebook, such as through Facebook messages, chat, or posts on profiles or pages” but again many brands do because they’re using likes and/or not using a third party application such as Easypromos.
The “just in case” part is for if/when Facebook ever decide to turn the screw and actually apply their guidelines. A lot of pages still offer prizes at X number of likes and winners are contacted by Walls and messages etc. To be honest it’s a surprise that Facebook haven’t created their own forced contest app for pages – imagine the data collection they could be doing with such an idea.
Top Tip: Just be aware that there are guidelines… you never know when Facebook will enforce them!
2. Voting Competitions
We’ve been involved with online competitions for 14 years now. We’ve watched Facebook evolve, we’ve seen good and bad things when it comes to competitions. So, when we (Loquax) say “voting competitions are a really stupid idea” – that means they’re a stupid idea! A voting competition will not result in the best entry winning – it will result in the person who can “cheat” the most winning.
Voting competitions attract groups of people who swap votes, pay for votes, have multiple Facebook accounts for votes – in fact pretty much do anything whatsoever for votes. Grand Marnier for example recently ran a competition for a “Sunset Photo”. The winner was to be determined by most votes. It took them until 3 days before the closing date to realise that what they were told at the start was true…. it wasn’t a “best sunset” competition but a “most clicks” competition.
In the end they got a judge in to decide the winner.
Similarly, a charity were offering 4 iPads in their Facebook competition. Towards the end of the promotion they realised that the winning “stories” were pretty poor – in fact so poor they would have gained no PR by using them (one of the aims of the competition). The top entries were simply using vote sites not “asking friends and family” as so many promoters ask. In the end they also changed their rules and went to the judge it yourself option.
If you do go down the public votes route, try and mix the prizes up. For example offer a token prize to the most voted entry, and the biggest prize to a judged entry.
Top Tip: Avoid voting competitions! Get an independent judging panel and pick a winner that way.
3. Photo Competitions
I like photo competitions as they give an added challenge to using your camera (mind, I really wish I’d not drowned my camera in the sea yesterday – that’s another story). A lot of Facebook promoters like photo competitions too. But if people cheat on voting, guess what… they’ll cheat with photo competitions too! It’s not unknown for images to be lifted off Google and entered into a Facebook competition.
Thankfully there are eagle eyed entrants who like to spot cheats. Photobox for example almost awarded a prize to a photo of a “Royal Toilet” lifted from The Daily Mail. They were alerted to the problem by another participant and acted swiftly to disqualify the “winner”.
On The Beach Holidays have encountered a similar problem. However, despite being told that a couple of their winning photos are plagarised they’ve awarded prizes. They’re now saying they’ll investigate any issues, but the damage has been done.
Top Tip: Use reverse image search sites like Tineye.com to check validity
4. Sob Stories
“Tell us why you should win” is a very bad competition question. If you choose this route you will get a rollercoaster of emotional answers that will pull on your heartstrings. But are they genuine or just sob stories. This is a real tough one for competition promoters. Therefore try and avoid questions that generate answers that range from “i have man-flu” to “i’m suffering from the recent loss of a family member”…. and much more beyond that.
Top Tip: Keep your competitions fun and light – it will make picking a winner a lot easier!
5. Listen To Your Wall
Not listening is a massive problem for many a promoter. If you announce your great prize promo on Facebook and it results in negative feedback (e.g. voting competitions attract cheating or that photo is borrowed) then act upon it. Don’t decide you know better.. because you probably don’t.
The great thing about Facebook is that it opens up transparency in a lot of competitions. It shows up cheating by entrants and it shows up errors by brands. You need to be on top of things and you need to act swiftly. As above, Photobox were very good at dealing with a problem – which left could have damaged their very successful (and enjoyable) 24 Hour Live Photo Challenge.
Top Tip: If you’ve encountered a problem head to Loquax and ask us for help!
6. Stop And Think
This is the biggest error of them all when it comes to brands running a Facebook competition. No one stops and thinks it through. It’s not just the voting and photo competitions mentioned above, it’s the smaller ones too. A “share this post and like it” competition can result in 100s of posts appearing on your wall… great for your competition, but what about your customers?
If you go to a brand’s page and see “Liked This” or “Enter Me” right the way down the page that doesn’t look great. If you see long arguments about cheating or vote rigging then that doesn’t look great either. You can run a promotion sensibly, fairly and also gain the social advantages you’re after. You just need to stop and think a little bit.
Top Tip: Look at other brands on Facebook and see how their competitions run.
Should You Be Running A Facebook Competition?
If you want to pick up numbers on your Facebook pages then “yes” running a competition is a great idea. Done properly it can be a good way to pick up followers and interact with them. The Photobox 24 Hour Live competition was in my view one that was done properly and a lot of brands could learn from that.
The trouble is many won’t learn… they’ll still be vote cheating, walls plastered with unnecessary comments, photo cheating and what have you. It’s easy to point the finger at the people cheating and/or complaining about compers – but actually the responsibility of your promotion comes down to you. If you do things right, create proper rules, adhere to them and listen to your users – then cheats can’t prosper.
Next time you’re in a social media seminar and someone says “use competitions on Facebook” ask them what the pitfalls are… if they don’t know the above, then they’ve probably never looked much beyond their own wall.
Guest Post – Affiliates & Social Media
Written by Kirsty McCubbin in Affiliate Marketing on September 12, 2011
Hey there my fellow affiliates! I’ve got a great guest post from a very well known face in the UK affiliate marketing scene for you all. I’m sure most of my UK readers will either know or have worked with the lovely Hannah Swift who recently left Existem-AM to forge out on her own.
We all know Hannah as one of the best affiliate managers in the UK, but did you know she’s also more than a little bit good at Social Media as well? Her newly launched business Bright Digital Minds offers social media management amongst other things, so I thought it’d be great if Hannah could show off her knowledge in this area in the form of a guest post.
Social Media And Affiliates
There are a number of good reasons why affiliates should begin to embrace social media, if they haven’t already. Forget the instant sales and start thinking of social media as an extension of your brand, a traffic generator and a direct way of communicating with your users and potential ‘customers’.
There are a number of key social media tools that all affiliates should begin to use, from the oldest form of social media – the blog, right up to the more current channels such as Twitter. I could talk for hours about the many ways in which affiliates can use social media, but for now, I thought I’d pop down a few ideas and examples to get people started.
Whether for you as a person, your company or the site, LinkedIn opens up a world of opportunity. From finding other affiliates to swap ideas with or maybe the odd link, to creating a buzz about what you do.
Did you know there are over 100 million LinkedIn users? What better people to network with than with these people, like-minded business people or entrepreneurs. As an example, if you have a sports or adventure holidays website, then joining groups like (http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Adventure-Sports-Holidays-3798645?gid=3798645&mostPopular=&trk=tyah) this one, can give you inspiration for articles and new contacts, new merchants to get in touch with and perhaps even new content writers.
YouTube
We have all seen a YouTube video at some point, from replays of our favourite sporting moments to celebrities disgracing themselves for our amusement. However the power of YouTube goes beyond that. YouTube videos are an incredible way of visualising a product, giving a brand a personality and generating traffic.
Getting your readers to upload a video or share it or even comment on one can add an additional dimension to your site. There are a number of affiliates already using YouTube, one for example has a staggering 51,025 channel views, with their videos being watched a total of 132,441 times! Used on site to aid conversions and for viral campaigns, this affiliate has truly embraced the power of video. Despite what you may think, video is actually quite simple to create – with free software such as windows movie maker and iMovie. Why not try it and see what happens!
http://www.youtube.com/user/mydeco
Great for having a good old moan at your utility providers, stalking celebrities or keeping in touch with the rest of the world, Twitter is now dominating our lives. It’s not only a way of instantly getting your message out there, but it also provides a great platform for 2-way communication, firstly with your merchants; watching what they are promoting and keeping in touch or sourcing new ones.
Secondly, your readers and site users will have their own thoughts and experiences they want to share, they might have questions about products or more importantly they might become ‘brand advocates’. Re-tweeting and sharing your messages to their followers, they will help to promote you and your site. As an example @chocolatereview has a great mix of tweets to readers, merchants and promotional messages. Easy to read without being bombarded with sales, sales, sales!!!
Although not an affiliate, my favourite Facebook campaign at the moment has to be Vinnie The Panda (http://www.facebook.com/vinnie). Not only do I keep getting free biscuits in the post, but you can take lots of useful ideas from it. The first page you land on gathers your data, so not only can you be marketed to by Facebook (in the hope you share the love) but Vinnie can now continue his message to your email.
Carefully handled and well executed Facebook can bring you more than just inactive fans. Facebook can deliver data, brand advocates and of course, high quality traffic.
Blogs
The founding tool of social media, the humble blog should not be forgotten, from helping with on site SEO to giving you the chance to discuss wider topics. Take the Olympics as an example; if you own a site about the Olympics, mainly focused on places to stay. Then your blog becomes a chance for you to discuss London visitor attractions, flights, the clothing the athletes are endorsing, memorabilia (did you know they have Olympics branded tea towels!) It gives you a chance to let those creative juices flow, perhaps pick up a few additional sales without flooding your main site with ‘irrelevant’ content. You might even pick up some links too!
How To Get Involved?
The best way to get involved with social media is just to give it a go. Think about what you would like to see as a customer, how would you like to interact with a company? What information would you like to know and most importantly, how often? Shouting ten times a day for a few days and then nothing for weeks is not the best way forward. To quote a dear friend ‘less Billy Connolly, more Billy Joel’ be remembered for the fun things, not the inaudible rants!
I really hope my quick snap shot into social media for affiliates helped! If you have any questions or want to find out more – get in touch!
This post is from: Kirsty's Affiliate Marketing Guide - Affiliate Stuff UK
Guest Post – Affiliates & Social Media
