Top 10 Ways to Use Social Media In Affiliate Marketing
Want to learn how you can use social media for affiliate marketing?
Over 4.5 billion people are using social media regularly, making it an amazing place for marketing.
And by using social media for affiliate marketing, you can reach tons of new customers and grow your business
But there are already so many businesses using social media for marketing so it’s easy to get lost in the crowd.
The good news? We’re here with the best social media affiliate marketing hacks that you can use to grow your sales with ease.
Before we get started, let’s take a look at the ways social media can help your affiliate marketing.
Top 10 ways to use Social Media In Affiliate Marketing
1. Set Up Your Affiliate Program
If you haven’t done so already, start by setting up your affiliate marketing program.
Affiliate tracking software like Tapfiliate will provide you with all the functions and features you need to run your affiliate program in-house. This includes referral links, custom affiliate sign-up pages, shareable marketing materials, and detailed performance reports.
Conversions: What action affiliates will earn a commission for? For e-commerce, this is typically when a referred customer makes a purchase. A conversion could also include an email sign-up, free trial, or successful subscription payment.
Commissions: How much affiliates will earn for a conversion. This could be a flat rate or % of the sale. Additionally, it can be a one-time commission payout or a recurring commission.
2. Choose the Right Social Media Platform
Find the social media platform that will be most beneficial to your affiliate marketing goals.
Start with researching the biggest social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and the newcomer TikTok. But also be sure to check out more topic-focused platforms such as Pinterest, Reddit, and Quora.
3. Create Vanity Coupon Codes
Did you know that 80% of customers are more likely to buy from places that offer a personalized experience?
With vanity coupon codes, you can provide that personalized experience and grow your business with ease. A vanity code allows your affiliates to create custom coupon codes to share with their audience.
As a result, it’s super easy to create memorable coupon codes that stand out and get more conversions. Instead of using the same generic code as everyone else, your affiliates can pick codes that show off their personality. In fact, they can even create coupon codes that contain inside jokes or references to make it feel exclusive to their audience.
4. Run Viral Giveaways
Looking for an easy way to get people’s attention on social media? Then you can just organize giveaways. Since you’re giving out a prize, people will be much more likely to engage with the social media marketing posts.
All you have to do is run a giveaway, and your affiliates can promote that giveaway and grab people’s attention. As a result, your business can easily get tons of new customers. RafflePress is a fantastic plugin that can help you create engaging giveaways in just a few simple clicks – no coding needed. To help you get started quickly, you get different pre-built templates to build social media giveaways.
5. Recruit your affiliates
An affiliate program is no good if it doesn’t have… well, affiliates. But affiliates aren’t just gonna start signing up for a new affiliate program. You have to reach out to them.
You can do this in three ways:
- Use an affiliate network. As earlier mentioned, affiliate networks like CJ, Rakuten, and ShareASale can help you find the right affiliates for your business. You just need to input your criteria and the networks will source for affiliates that meet your requirements.
- Cold outreach. You can reach out to potential affiliates via email as you would a brand for a partnership. For more tips on this, check out this Hootsuite post on how to find Instagram influencers.
- Share on social channels. You can announce the launch of your affiliate program on your social media channels, too. Because who is more eager to be an affiliate of your brand than someone who’s already a fan?
6. Target Audience
Who is your target audience and what social media platforms are they most engaged & active on?
Again, each platform has different approaches to creating and sharing content. As a result, the users on each platform are made up of different demographics.
Gen Z has fully embraced newcomer TikTok, while also still dominating Instagram. Millennials prefer to stay up to date on current events and happenings via Twitter. College-educated professionals account for the majority of LinkedIn users. And everyone is on Facebook.
7. Find Great Affiliates to Promote on Social Media
Finding great affiliates is directly tied to choosing the right social media. You wouldn’t want to partner with an affiliate who uses Pinterest when your marketing is more suited for the content and audiences on YouTube.
As we mentioned before, affiliates can be anyone from your loyal customers to big-name influencers.
Influencers
The most notable affiliates on social media are the “influencers”. Influencers have the ability to reach wide audiences and can be great for brand awareness.
The primary social media platform for influencers is Instagram, along with YouTube and TikTok. Most influencers are within a certain niche, whether it be fashion, makeup, skincare, fitness, travel, wellness, tech, DIY, and so on.
Micro-Influencers
Just the same as influencers, but on a smaller scale.
With somewhere between 1,000 to 100,000 followers, micro-influencers have highly engaged followings. So much so that Impact found an increase in followers results in a decrease in engagement; and influencers with 1,000 followers had engagement as high as 85%.
Along with high engagement rates, micro-influencers are generally open to pursuing pay-for-performance offers rather than requiring up-front payments.
Industry Groups
Online groups, pages, and forums are another great place to find affiliates and promote your brand. Platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Reddit have a wide range of online communities focused on specific industries and niches.
Affiliates can promote relevant content, with valuable tips and referral links to products. Keep in mind how you approach joining these groups, and make sure you and your affiliates don’t come off as aggressive or spammy.
Social Media Mentions
Track your online social media mentions seeing where you are being talked about and by who. To start, this will help you find which platforms your audience is most active on. As a result, you’ll have more insight into the type of content your audience is interacting with and how you can create similar content.
8. Use Visual Content
Did you know that adding photos and videos can boost views on social media by 45%? Social media posts with visual content can immediately grab people’s attention and keep them engaged.
You can have your affiliates post engaging photos and videos of your products and get tons of views on social media. You can use landing pages to show visual content from social media on your website.
So, your website will have engaging photos and videos to keep your visitors interested. At the same time, you can promote your products and get more sales.
9. Pay affiliates on a schedule that allows time to correct for returns
While you need to pay affiliates on time, you also need to allow time to correct any returns before payday.
30 to 60 days after the sale is a good amount of time, depending on your return window. But you need to make this timeframe clear in your affiliate agreement so that the creator knows what to expect.
If you’re using an affiliate management tool, your affiliate marketers should be able to log in to directly track their own sales and monitor pending payments. If you run your program directly, you need to personally inform your affiliates of their sales and payment.
10. Monitor the ROI of your affiliate marketing program
The best way to scale your social media affiliate marketing is to track your results and tweak your program based on your insights. You can use analytics tools to track your progress and find the affiliate resources that work best. When you find your most successful affiliates, reach out to them and ask how you can support them better.
You also need to keep an eye on how much you make from your affiliate program in relation to how much you pay out. If you’re earning more money than you envisaged from affiliate sales or your customer/order value is higher than anticipated, you can decide to increase your commission. Or not. The ball’s in your court.
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Ready to get started with affiliate marketing?
Earning money with affiliate marketing programs can be a rewarding way to earn money online without taking on too much risk. All it will cost you is your time. By investing the hours upfront, you can continue to reap the rewards and turn them into a steady source of income, if not a business all by itself.
