Affiliate marketing and social media can be compared to peanut butter and jam; a combination that just works. More and more internet marketers are introducing their affiliates to social media sites to help them generate affiliate sales. It’s a great idea and it does work. You’ll find that only a small percentage of affiliates have large email lists that can accommodate broadcasting affiliate announcements or emails so moving to more popular social networks such as Facebook and Twitter are more available and easier to help spread the word about your products or services.
One of the growing tasks Virtual Assistants are taken are is the development of affiliate communication geared towards these social media channels. Here’s some examples of how a VA can create materials for promotion.
1. Affiliate Newsletter
Create consistent communication with your affiliates by producing a month or quarterly newsletter. A VA can format it in html or plain text format and set up a broadcast through your email marketing system. I find it advisable to include a merge code of the affiliate link for each affiliate. This way they don’t have to go searching for their affiliate URL; make it as easy as possible for your affiliates to get the information they need. The clients’ email marketing system should have the ability to automatically pull each affiliates default link into the broadcast.
2. Pre-written Tweets
Within the newsletter, supply your affiliates with pre-written tweets. You can’t deny the popularity of twitter today for delivering communication quickly and effectively. Have your VA draft up 6 tweets for you to approve. The tweets will need to be 140 characters maximum and include the affiliate link. We encourage affiliates to shorten their links using tinuyurl.com or the link shortening software within Hootsuite.com, Tweetdeck.com or Seesmic.com.
3. Pre-written Facebook Posts
As with Twitter, your VA can draft up 2 or 3 quick Facebook posts for the affiliates to add to their profile or page. These posts can be a little longer to suit the conversational aspect of Facebook. Encourage your affiliates to augment the message for their own language if necessary. Remember, the key is to make it as simple as possible for your affiliates to “get the word out” about your products or services.
Affiliate marketing doesn’t have to be difficult and with today’s surge in the use of social media channels it just makes sense to utilize them. Your VA can be an integral part in building your affiliate numbers and sales.
This is a fantastic article. I couldn’t agree with you more. I know many people who have VA’s and assign them these tasks on a daily basis.
It is something that can make a huge impact in the event that the business owner does not really know their way around the social media hang outs yet they really want to get their brand out there. How many business owners really have the time to sit on twitter or facebook promoting their brand(s)? Shouldn’t they be out there working with their clients and prospects? 😉
If you hire the right VA with a good deal of knowledge with social media outlets if and done correctly this is a major ROI.
Thanks for your great comments Heather. I agree, you are seeing a lot more call for Virtual Assistants to work specifically as “Affiliate Managers” to find new affiliates and work with existing affiliates to make the process of ‘referring sales” easy. And if that works, both parties win!