Companies realise that a product recommendation made through social networking websites is simple; it can be embedded within a post/tweet and it can reach out to all of the users’ followers. This route has had a powerful impact on the affiliate marketing industry, with a progressive increase in the use of blogs and social networks meaning that virtually anybody can become an affiliate. Domino’s Pizza recently launched a trial “social affiliate” widget that enables anybody with a network page or blog to advertise a selection of brands. People using the widget can plug products and subsequently earn commissions from sales. The idea was developed by BLM Quantum in partnership with Domino’s. Publishers simply sign up and download the dashboard to track generated sales, which works through the Affiliate Window network. Dan Clays, Managing Director of BLM Quantum says “Brands benefit by aligning with sites run by fans who are more likely to drive a sale, while site owners can generate revenues from their Facebook page or blog”.

Domino’s is the first brand to integrate affiliate marketing and social media this way, although similarly social networking site Facebook has launched their own tools to connect their users with the affiliate marketing industry. At their most recent regular F8 conference, the connection between social media and users respective interests was examined and as a result, 3 unique tools were launched which would also connect social media with affiliate marketers. One of these is the new Social Plug-in which includes already recognisable features such as the current ‘Like’ button. This is has been extended to publishers to allow users to see when their friends have clicked the ‘Like’ button on a site outside of the Facebook network. With this tool affiliates can bring a bigger level of social media to their sites in a more cursory way. There are also graphs to enable users to see how promoting a product can reach out into the user’s circle of friends and Facebook can then offer targeted recommendations according to what the user’s interests are, based on their promotions. One of the most significant developments will be the consequence this will have on Google. In theory it should reduce a websites individual reliance on Google for traffic, and ultimately rank higher in future Google searches.

On face value, the launch of the new tools would appear to be a positive move in creating an effective Facebook relationship with affiliates; however, it is clear there will be challenges associated with this new form of marketing.

It will be interesting to see how users react to both the Facebook tools and the new Domino’s ‘social affiliate’ test. The way they form a relationship with their sub-affiliates could be crucial. Communication is essential to maintaining a healthy relationship between the brand and affiliate and if this overlooked it could have a detrimental effect on the payment process. Social media users are unlikely to remain committed to the brand if they have no form of commissions for their referrals, therefore an ordered system of payments would be effective as a reward for the affiliates work. The brand also needs to effectively manage these new affiliates so that they continually drive traffic and in a favourable manner. Social media is becoming increasingly significant to affiliate marketing. Once these challenges have addressed then the benefit of this new form of sub-affiliate could be a big advantage to an expansive range of brands.

For more information go to:

• http://www.utalkmarketing.com/Pages/Article.aspx?ArticleID=17035&Title=Domino%E2%80%99s_Pizza_trials_world%E2%80%99s_first_%E2%80%98Social_Affiliate%E2%80%99_tool
• http://www.affiliates4u.com/news/2010/04/what-do-facebooks-new-tools-mean-affiliates/

It’s a simple fact: affiliate sites require traffic.

There are many ways to drive traffic to your site, but the one that comes above all else is natural search engine optimisation (SEO). There are plenty of strategies and tactics that you can employ to push your traffic up and this article contains some tips and tricks which you might find useful.

Starting with the basics – why is SEO important? Quite simply, your site will gain more exposure if it has a higher position in the search result listings for your target key phrases. When you use a search engine to find out information, how often do you browse past the first page? If your site isn’t listed there, chances are it won’t be found by the vast majority of potential users.

You have to consider just how key SEO is to your web marketing strategy. If you are considering placing all your eggs in one basket and looking for big results then obviously you will need to think about your how site is structured and how content is written and presented. Building your site in standards-compliant code is crucial, as is populating it with original, unique content. Google (and the other major search engines) doesn’t like cookie-cutter sites made up of the same content as every other affiliate site. If you are serious about being highly ranked, you should be thinking of ways to generate unique content that your competitors simply don’t have, and filling your site with it. This is the first major step towards achieving that page one listing.

Original, interesting content isn’t just good for the search engine spiders – it will also attract human attention, generating those all-important inbound links and further viral traffic through word-of-mouth recommendations.

Careful thought should be given to the keyword phrases that you choose to optimise the site for. Consider the terms that your users might enter into a search engine to find the products/services that your site contains information on. It’s better to target 3-4 word phrases than those consisting of only one or two words. Working in this way is known as targeting the “long tail” – those terms where search volumes are low, but competition is also low. The long tail is where the money lies.

So what is a long term keyword? Take the term “marketing”, or even “affiliate marketing”, which is extremely broad and would be very difficult to achieve a page one raking for. If you were to add on a couple more words to make it “affiliate marketing services” however, the level of competition might decrease. If you were to further specialise to “affiliate marketing services teacher”, page one is looking much more realistic. The number of people searching for this phrase will be a lot lower, but if you build pages and structure your site to cater for a multitude of similar long tail phrases, your traffic volumes will increase accordingly. These keywords need to be littered all over your website to increase its visibility.

Another idea is to create a supporting blog and fill it with original content, linked to your website. If you create the blog on a sub-domain e.g. blog.mydomain.com, you will squeeze more ‘SEO juice’ on the inbound link front; if you put the blog in a subfolder e.g. mydomain.com/blog, then you will benefit from a better internal linking structure. Whilst having different web pages for your website is fine, a sub domain paves way for a new category, topic or blog. So how does this benefit you? Well firstly they are usually free to add to your hosting account and easy to create, and secondly bring lots of added value to your website as the sub-domain is viewed as an entirely unique domain, meaning it will usually appear as a separate site in the search results.

Link building is one of the major aspects of SEO. You can build your inbound link base naturally by writing interesting articles that will attract the audience’s attention due to their content, which will then be likely to be linked to by other people. You could try writing something outrageous or eye-catching, a technique commonly known as ‘”link baiting” which has become a powerful way of generating natural link building but may not be suitable for corporates.

Some other ideas for generating inbound links include writing a topical article, talking about something newsworthy, being controversial or humorous, engaging in a debate. You basically need to use your imagination and make it interesting to as wide an audience as possible. For example if you specialise in Halloween products, write an article about safe trick or treating, or the top 10 costume ideas.

Another tip is to try guest blogging on a site that relates to your field. If your website blog has barely any visitors it makes sense to build a profile on one that does. Some blog owners will allow you write a small biography about yourself and include it at the end of your guest article with a link to your website. You should know your industry well enough that you know the best blogs to contact. Try using Google blogs to find ones that are suited to you. For a general blog, Blogcatlog.com offers a range of topics and lets you submit as many articles as you like.

This might seem obvious but analysing your competitors is a great way to get ideas. Look at the websites which are ranked number 1 for your target keywords and try to work out what it is that they did to get there. Look at their inbound links by entering “link:competitordomain.com” into Google. Have a look at the websites linking to them and decide whether or not you could request/win a link from the same sites. There are lots of handy tool available that you can add to your browser. In particular, there are some very strong addons for FireFox from seobook.com. Downloading the tools is free and gives you access to a range of facilities for gauging search engine performance and comparing competing websites.

Directory submissions are commonly used by webmasters to try and increase traffic to their site by building their inbound link base. However, this method has good and bad points to consider. Links from directory sites are generally very low value so they won’t really give your site much of a leg-up. They are very good at hiding your high value links from competitors though. Do not buy links as it could be disastrous – Google has been known to de-list sites faster than you can say “page rank” on discovery that link buying has been used.

Consider article submissions as a way to build up a profile for your site. They work in a similar way to guest blogging. Some websites enable users to post their own useful, interesting articles and if considered newsworthy, you may even get paid a small fee! Once the article is live, there will be a link for readers to find out more about you/your website. One website to look at in particular is Nettuts.com. They pay up to $150 for one article and are constantly updating the topics that they require from readers. Of course, the article will be reviewed to check its relevancy and content, but if you find a website tailored to your interests then it’s a good idea to look into.

Another good way to optimise your search engine results is to enlist the help of a PR company. They will be able to submit an article about your company or about a development in your industry on your behalf, and might even be able to write the article for you. You can submit to some online PR companies for free, whilst others charge. The more companies you submit to, the more likely it will appear on a search engine linked under the press release site.

Finally, it is important to remember that the best inbound links are the ones that take a lot of work or that your competitors can’t get. If it’s easy, it’s worth nothing. It may be more time-consuming, but will give you better results in the end – after all the ultimate aim is to drive traffic to your site.

But are they wrong to miss out on this opportunity? And what about smaller retailers and merchants?

For smaller retailers the issues around brand protection and incrementality are less poignant.  Small retailers are interested in any traffic that boosts sales.

The main problem is that Twitter is full of spammers.  I am constantly amazed by the number of spammers trying to follow my burblings on Twitter.

For affiliate marketing to work on Twitter, marketers will have to become a lot more intelligent.  Genuine recommendation (as with all marketing) is the most valuable whilst spam links add no value.  Indeed a genuine recommendation from a big celebrity, even to a large Internet player like Amazon, will have enormous value.  It follows that recommendations from reputable but less high profile Tweeters will also add value: less than the celebrity but more than the spammer.

But can Twitter get its house in order and curb the spammers?

It may be too soon to tell.  Twitter is a relatively new service, and is still having teething problems; it was down again
yesterday evening for me in the UK for example.

I also suspect that affiliate marketing networks and merchants will need convincing that Twitter is a manageable and safe place for their affiliates to promote their products.  This will take time.

Users will also need access to better tools to allow them to link to a wide range of retailers quickly and easily.  Tools like these are becoming available, ProfitBite is one such example.

Affiliate marketing through Twitter is already happening.  I suspect it will develop and grow into a large industry that will once again attract back the big Internet marketers like Amazon.  It will take time though.  The tools and technologies will be required before anyone can run successful affiliate campaigns with confidence from Twitter.

References:

• “Damn Marketers.  Affiliate Links on Twitter.” – http://www.jangro.com/affiliate-marketing/damn-marketers-affiliate-links-in-twitter/
• “No Precedence For Social Media – Amazon Hangs Us Out To Dry” – http://www.searchenginejournal.com/amazon-affiliates-social-media/11654/
• “Affiliate Links in Twitter, Amazon Says No” – http://www.jangro.com/affiliate-marketing/affiliate-links-in-twitter-amazon-says-no/