Twitter As A Marketing Tool For Affiliates – Does It Work?

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with twitter. It’s fun and a great way to connect with some of my online friends, keep up with current topics and build new relationships. At the same time, it can be quite the time sucker and I’ve had days where I spent way too much time reading through tweets instead of getting work done.

With that said, I thought we’d talk a little bit about twitter this week. I think it has its place as a marketing tool for any affiliate marketer, but only if used the right way.

By the way – if you’d like to follow me on Twitter, I’m @susannemyers.

Let’s start with the obvious: Don’t Be Spammy – it just doesn’t get you anywhere. Please don’t just randomly tweet affiliate links for various products and services in your tweets. They simply don’t work. Instead, only rarely use an affiliate link directly and only if the product is something you’ve tried yourself, find valuable and it is something that’s relevant to the majority of your followers.

A much better strategy is to promote products indirectly. Instead of tweeting your link, take the time to write a product review for your blog or website. Another option would be to write something related and then promote the affiliate product within the content. Then tweet the link to your post or page.

You also don’t want to tweet just to promote yourself, your websites or affiliate offers. A good rule of thumb is the 80/20 rule. Tweet about things that aren’t promoting you (product offers, blog posts etc) about 80% of the time. This could be general chit chat, responding to other tweets, links to other peoples articles or blog posts, asking questions etc. Then use the remaining 20% to talk about your own posts.

So, what should you use twitter for then as an affiliate marketer, since we established that promoting your affiliation links directly doesn’t work and you also shouldn’t be promoting your own site too much?

I briefly touches on the types of tweets you want to write the majority of the time, but we haven’t really talked about goals with this yet. Your goal as with many social media websites is to use twitter to connect with your target market and your peers. Use it to show more of your personality and to build relationships with other twitter users. You can do this by asking questions, responding to other tweets and sharing some tips, tidbits about your day or what you’re working on and pictures.

I’m not very big on posting fotos on twitter, but the few times when I have done this, it’s been well received.

P.S. What’s your experience with twitter? How are you using it in your online business. What are your biggest questions or challenges about twitter?

You may also like to read:

1. Using Twitter In Your Blog and Vice Versa
2. Twitter And Ezinearticles.com – Get Your Content Noticed
3. Tips For Growing Your Twitter Following
4. The Affiliate Marketing Backend
5. Affiliate Marketing Beginnings – Don’t Get Overwhelmed

Tags: twitter, twitter as a marketing tool, twitter marketing

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