8 Ways Affiliates Can Benefit from Twitter
Posted on 03/19/2010
Twitter has become the major networking and marketing tool for many businesses. And when used correctly, it can be a powerful tool to help you become a more successful affiliate. In this article will go over the how to promote your affililiate site, how to build relationships with Affiliate Networks through Twitter, and how to use Twitter to track your competitors and find the affiliate program for your needs.
1. Promote Your Affiliate Site
Just dropping your affiliate link on Twitter won't work: you need to select a better, higher-quality approach.
Write good content, integrate affiliate links in it and promote your content on Twitter. Thus you won't sacrifice on quality of your Tweets and will drive good traffic to your affiliate site.
The so-called "in-direct" promotion will prevent you from losing friends and help build relevant readership (which means conversions and earnings):
- Send links as a natural part of conversation (in reply maybe);
- Tweet personal messages, not canned ones;
- Don't be all about yourself (participate and contribute!)
There are a few popular Twitter-based tools that will also help you promote your content on Twitter. The huge group of coupon affiliates, for example, will find the following Twitter tools very useful:
2. Research Before Trying the Program
Twitter is one of the best sources for real-life affiliate program reviews. Search it for positive and negative reviews with help of emoticon :) / :( - this is called "Sentiment search":
e.g. [Weight Watchers affiliate program :(]
More search engines to help you in Twitter sentiment search:
- Twitter Sentiment
- Twitrratr
- SocialMention (uses use textual analysis, emoticons, symbols to analyze the sentiment). With Social Mention you can see the sentiment ratio ("the ratio of mentions that are generally positive to those that are generally negative.") as well as filter by (negative sentiment):
3. Track Affiliate Tips and News
Best Twitter blogs broadcast affiliate-marketing-related news to Twitter. By following the smartest industry insiders you can both educate yourself and build valuable contacts.
Here are a few of them:
You can find a more or less complete list here.
4. Contact Affiliate Networks and Affiliate Managers
Twitter is quickly becoming an alternative customer support for many businesses that care about their affiliates. Finding and connecting to official Twitter profiles of affiliate programs and networks will help you to develop solid contacts in the company:.
Here are the most popular affiliate networks that are on Twitter to help you:
5. Track Affiliate Events and Conferences
Only few of us can afford to regularly go to the conferences and affiliate marketing events. However with Twitter, those who can't make it to a conference, can still be up-to-date with what is happening there.
Currently each event has an official Twitter hashtag which you can use to track all live broadcasting and news regarding it. The thing is to pick a good suitable tool to do that.
Seesmic is a handy desktop application that runs on Adobe AIR and allows to easily track any term or hashtag on Twitter. First, configure the tool by going to Settings > Notifications and putting a tick next to "Notify about new search results":
After that search Twitter from inside Seesmic. You pretty much done! Now once anyone Tweets your hashtag, the tool will notify you with help of a handy clutter-free pop-up in the lower right corner of your screen:
6. Get Inspired: Track Affiliate Offers
If you are entering a new niche and need to be aware of which affiliate programs others seem to have success with, tracking twitter for relevant conversation is a great idea. Twitter will give you an idea of:
- What other programs exist in the same niche as you are;
- What other programs people are talking about;
- Which programs to avoid;
- Which affiliate marketing networks are best in your specific niche, etc.
You can use Seesmic for that as shown above or you may try to take advantage of other services, like:
- Twitter Search: allows to subscribe to new search results by RSS;
- ListiMonkey: updates you via email once your keyword is tweeted within the selected Twitter list;
- TweetAlarm: email alerts for Twitter (a similar one: TweetBeep)
7. Use Affiliate Twitter Tools
Most popular affiliate programs are seeking the ways to engage their affiliates into Twitter marketing. You don't want to overuse those tools because this way your Twitter stream will look like a classified ad (see #1) but taking advantage of the tools now and then won't hurt (and will make you some extra income) when used in the proper context (for example, when asking a question about a book you may recommend).
Here are a few examples of such tools that make tweeting for affiliates much easier:
- LinkShare #Tweetshop: allows to easily tweet products using your affiliate link;
- Amazon "Share" option: Amazon allows to easily promote the products on Twitter and earn commissions:
To Conclude
Twitter can become your most effective marketing tool if your approach is solid and intentions are sincere.
The only rule that one never needs to forget is that Twitter is supposed to be about building relationships within any industry. Once that is broken, Twitter has no purpose for any of us. So make sure to use it right to never break that fundamental principle.
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