More than 140 characters Tweet – Emarketeur’s Blog

  Twitter, the micro-blogging service and the social media celebrity is more and more adopted by affiliate marketing players.

  Affiliate networks like Zanox, LinkShare and ShareAsale have already established their presence on Twitter. Once again, this proves that affiliate marketing isn’t really dissociated from other online marketing channels like social media. On the contrary, affiliate marketing players are taking advantages from these tools to band with their partners, both in B2C and B2B, and to get a better performance.

  Merchants, affiliates and networks can all benefit from Twitter. Indeed, it is a channel for performance marketing players to :

Communicate and get Feedback from their clients : the merchant Target.com (@AffiliateTarget) testifies in the fourth edition of Feedfront Magazine their use of Twitter as an effective communication channel with their affiliates, helping them to achieve higher levels of reactivity.

 Clickbank get into Twitter to collect affiliate feedback and resolve their problems promptly. See an example at “TWITTER AS AN AFFILIATE NETWORK SUPPORT TOOL“.

Improve affiliate productivity : Jillian McGary, affiliate manager at Target.com, said that ” Publishers are busy and get a ton of emails, but Twitter can be a convenient alternative that is accessible from a computer or mobile device.” It takes you only a few seconds to read and to respond to a tweet. I’m not bringing a new information here, but Twitter is the most effective instant communication tool. It’s instant and social !!! Twitter, also, allows personalized communication either over direct messages or over applications like Twitter Groups that helps to allocate followers into several groups and send them personalized DM. In addition, it can be used to communicate, collaborate and follow progress in a project. For that, members should be protecting their updates in the Twitter settings.

Besides affiliates can manage multiple twitter accounts by interacting with a unique interface thanks to applications as Matt and Splitweet.

Promote affiliate programs and recruit potential affiliates : both affiliate managers and affiliate networks can use Twitter to promote affiliate programs and recruit new affiliates among the tweeps. Zanox has already its account dedicated to promote affiliate programs (@zanox_affiliate).

Receive affiliate commissions : today there are applications that help affiliates to use Twitter as an effective publishing tool, such as cligs the shorten URL service, creating tiny URLs suitable to social media, but the real value proposition of cligs reside in the geo-targeting and the tracking features. It’s an application that helps affiliates to reach the right audience, on social media platforms. To know more about cligs, see this demo at http://vimeo.com/2208007. Cligs has also a Twitter account @cligs.

The affiliate network Webgains.com included a shorten URL function so that affiliates can promote their links safely, on social networks.

Another useful application for affiliates, based on Twitter, is TwTQpon witch allows them to distribute coupons via Twitter.

While some creations are approved by affiliate marketing players, others are not that much appreciated such as Magpie witch is an ad network conceived to let Twitter users to publish contextual ads within their tweets and receive commissions. Even if a tweep can fix the frequency of ad publishing per tweets, this activity is considered as Spammy. 

By the way, I invite you to listen to an intersting Geekcast episode about if it’s ok to post affiliate links on Twitter

I foresee that Twitter is a great place to help affiliate review sites to thrive.

Monitor the affiliate industry : Twitter allows affiliates not only to monitor affiliate programs and merchants or networks to monitor affiliate and customer needs, but also it allows them to monitor what’s going on in the affiliate industry and to follow the leaders of performance marketing since the e-marketer tweeps share relevant resources within their tweets. Also, apps like twilert, Tweet later, Company buzz (a linkedin app), make affiliate business monitoring easier, among the Twitter community. 

Establish beneficial relationships : Twitter helps businesses to create communities around their concepts, products, brands, etc. First, they should have a neat image about these targeted communities (their profiles, interests, problems, communication standards) and about how and to what extent they will engage with them.

Twitter allows businesses to extend online networking to the real world and that by inviting people to join an offline event, you can simply post a tweetup (tweet invitation) like MarketLeverage did.  

Tweetups are easier to be organized by twtvite

Generate qualified traffic : you should consider to add Twitter to your conversion funnel and track the traffic that generates all along. But, first, you must know that to start to generate a large traffic via Twitter, you should build credibility. It begins by choosing the right username, yes it’s important ! Twitter username gives to a potential follower the first impression. A good meaningful username is always well perceived and it gives a good impression about you. If you already have a good username on other social media, use it as your Twitter username too, because it reinforces your brand image and increases your visibility.

And please affiliates don’t use merchant brand names as your Twitter username it’s not only “cybersquatting” but also you loose your credibility. Always remember that a Social Media Strategy is conceived for the long term, and your affiliate business should never depends on a unique merchant. Twitter solid communities aim at trustful long term relationships. It’s the Twitter Relationship Management (TRM).

You should also, write an interesting biography and choose a relevant landing page for your twitter profile link, so that the potential follower get to know you better. Than increase your credibility by listening and being an active contributor to the community. 

Let’s summarize, Twitter is an Affiliate Marketing channel that helps affiliate marketing players in many ways :

1. Communicate and get feedback from clients,
2. improve affiliate productivity,
3. promote affiliate programs and recruit potential affiliates,
4. receive affiliate commissions,
5. monitor the affiliate industry,
6. establish beneficial relationships,
7. generate qualified traffic.

PS : This is not an order of importance

I believe that there will be new ways to benefit from Twitter and micro-blogging by affiliate marketing businesses or by any other businesses. By nature marketers are creative .

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