Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter haven’t been with us for very long, but they’ve rapidly become a critical marketing tool for all kinds of businesses. For affiliate marketing partners with limited marketing budgets these sites are a gift from the heavens.
Not only are social media sites usually free to use, they provide web masters with multiple points for posting content. But just because you can post something on a social media site doesn’t mean that you necessarily should.
Here’s how to select the right social media for your content.
With almost 300 million accounts, Facebook is the big dog on the social media scene, but it’s not necessarily the most business friendly. Most people still look at Facebook as a place for keeping in touch with friends and posting vacations. That may change in the near future as Facebook, and Zynga, consider adding real money gaming to the site.
Until then, affiliates should be very careful with how they use Facebook and carefully separate their person and business accounts. It’s one thing if your players are opting in to your gaming site profiles on Facebook but it’s not necessarily something the people you went to high school with want to hear about.
Facebook is clearly warming up to gaming and every affiliate should be thinking about how to integrate Facebook into their marketing strategies.
It’s been said that Facebook is for the people you know and Twitter is for the people you don’t know. For affiliates, that dictum is especially true. Twitter is very business friendly and everyone on Twitter expects a fair amount of self-promotion from the accounts they follow.
There’s nothing wrong with Tweeting out promotional offers, bonus announcements and content updates on Twitter all day long. In fact, many experts recommend sending out the same Tweets multiple times a day.
Just remember to keep your Tweets short, fun and to the point. Don’t be afraid to mix in a fair amount of humor and personality with your daily business Tweets.
LinkedIn is quietly become a major player on the social by mixing the resume posting qualities of Monster with the social interaction of Facebook. Web masters should not overlook this powerful medium for business networking and brand building in the affiliate marketing game.
Affiliates should look at LinkedIn not so much as a place to develop players, but as a place for building professional connections. Whether you’ve been in the business a long time or are just getting started, LinkedIn groups can help you develop useful industry contacts.
LinkedIn also allows users to publish content on their profiles and that content goes out to members in their network. Regularly pushing content on LinkedIn can help build your profile in the industry and drive traffic to your sites.
Just remember to keep it professional on LinkedIn, this is not the place for posting vacation photos and political musings.
Figuring Out Social Media
One nice feature about all social media is that you can get instant feedback. If your social media content isn’t generating interaction, page views, and re-Tweets you need to adjust your strategy.
How do you decide which content to send out on each of the big social media sites? Tell us about it on our General Discussion Forum.