Hello everybody.
I hope my suggestions for research and developing a strategy in the previous post inspired you to consider how to start your own affiliate marketing business.
Great.
A strategy is a good place to start.
Now here’s an issue I have with strategies and plans in general.
Just as a ship is constructed not be left in harbour but to be sailed, so is a strategy formulated not to be left in the back of the drawer but to be executed. The research you’ve carried must not be allowed to go to waste but has to be put into action. Even small steps can get us somewhere — as opposed to staying stationary in one place.
I raise this issue because I feel that as a beginner you may face a profound paradox — the absence of hard evidence — experience or data are some of the other names we use for it. It’s the classic Catch-22: you can’t get the job without the experience and you can’t get the experience without the job.
Then there is the spectre of not having sufficient technical expertise to decode the data should you even posses it in spades.
Affiliate marketing is nothing if not data-driven. So, where do you get the data from if you haven’t even executed any plans? How will you know without putting any strategies into action if they will work and if so how effectively?
This paucity of data — and the perceived lack of technical expertise to utilise it effectively — can be a major stumbling block.
Getting Around The Roadblocks
One way of getting around that obstacle is to explore social media trends for affiliate marketing. This notion of exploring social media trends for affiliate marketing makes sense only when we take into account the purpose of social media: people watching people, going about their lives doing stuff.
This is also one way of understanding the role of influencers in affiliate marketing — or, a prelude to leveraging the role of influencers in affiliate marketing — influencers lead you the many trends that are just emerging. Following this simple hack you spot trending niches for affiliate marketing long before your competition does.
There’s a reason why it’s called social media — participating in society means people watching. We humans excel in it. So, in that sense the question is: what are the best social media platforms for affiliate marketing?
You look for trends. You scour social media and become an avid consumer of the information freely available on these sites. That’s the reason people go on these sites any way. People-watching is the pervasive, the most universal hobby.
We don’t just go out for a coffee — thanks to Nespresso and George Clooney, we can get this at home now. We go out to be in the midst of other people. People need people.
Zuckerberg figured that out years ahead of us and built a digital platform — there’s synergy at work for you. Two powerful strands — social needs and digital technology — have now merged to become one large irresistible force. Even governments defer to social media.
How can we then say that we don’t have data? Actually, we’re drowning in it all the time, except that we don’t know it. What technical expertise do we need to consume this data? Actually, we’re doing it all the time without technical expertise.
We don’t go out to cafe armed with an encyclopaedia on socialisation in public places. We learn by interacting, however distantly (we don’t say hello to everybody in the cafe), and then build an internal database called experience which we update on each visit.
Could you apply that to visiting social media platforms?
Go there and observe as you would at a cafe or any other public place.
What do you hear? What do you see?
Use The Best Tool You Already Have
As sentient creatures our biggest asset is our consciousness. Not only are we aware but also self-aware. At any moment we’re bombarded by millions of sensations that our sensory apparatus picks up from our immediate surroundings, the environment we happen to inhabiting at the moment. Our nervous system then processes this multi-channel input to become our perceptions. We’re constantly being shaped by this swirl of sensations — we don’t need to consult anyone or anything in order to allow us be shaped in this manner. This is our natural endowment.
What we do need though is to stand back from this flood of sensations from time to time to take stock of them. A necessary part of experience is ruminating on it — chewing the cud, as it’s more technically known. This process is called insight . . . that sudden sense of illumination that comes from moving away from the live experience and discover its ultimate meaning.
In the same manner, you can gather insights from these sites — the digital equivalent of cafes. But unlike experience itself which cannot record itself (except in our consciousness), social media has highly developed built-in mechanisms for preserving it.
Google may be one of the biggest if not the biggest compiler of data competing with Facebook. Let’s not forget that data is the reason these companies are in business.
What is most striking is that these companies — and social media in general, for that matter — have made cult followers of us all — cult followers of data, that is. Incredible as this may sound, this has been largely possible because the clever engineers of interface presented data dressed up innocuously as hashtags that send down the strange alleyways of information.
These are the digital bread crumbs that perpetuate the behaviour of following trends. And, it’s not such a bad idea because, remember, our main aim is how to find profitable niche markets. Find out how below.
The algorithms are tweaked to reward such behaviours, so that it becomes a self-perpetuating process. While this may be bad for our mental health (and I definitely don’t advise that most horrid of behaviours: doom scrolling), it makes the point how data is essentially what drives the process. And, it does so by exploiting our natural tendencies: browsing; roaming; exploring.
Just by following them you could learn many valuable things. What’s trending? What are the winning, hot categories? That’s your data staring you in the face waiting for you to grab it — before somebody else does. This is one of the best affiliate marketing strategies you can adopt.
How To Improve Your Affiliate Marketing Strategy Using Social Media Insights
Another thing, consider incorporating social proof into your affiliate marketing strategy.
Follow the chats, the conversations . . . essentially, you’ll be data mining for affiliate marketing.
What are they saying? There may be people — influencers and their fans, to be more precise — ecstatic about products and services that they have used. May be they visited a gym or a pilates centre. They may be producing rave reviews.
Now here’s an important point. Positive experiences are all good. Most people would go for them. But what about negative experiences — those one-star reviews lurking in the background? Most of us would ignore them.
You know what I say? Ignore the negative reviews and you ignore the gold mines beneath your feet. The clever thing to do is utilising negative reviews for affiliate marketing.
Go after the negative one-star reviews as much if not more than the 5-star ones. That’s my advice.
What are people complaining about? Understand their main . . .
- Pain Points
These are treasure troves of utilisable but often underrated information. When people complain about something, when they publicise what’s bothering them about a product or service, they are essentially calling out for solution — they are calling out for someone to come along and say, “Here you go.”
Be that person who addresses these cries for help.
Negative reviews can become your net positive income. Have you ever thought how negativity can be transformed into positivity?
Another name for this:
- Underserved demand
Translation: low hanging fruit. That’s opportunity calling. Don’t let it go unanswered.
Some sites I recommend for this particular exercise are:
- Amazon
- SimilarWeb
- Google Trends
Now on a tangent — apart from finding out what people may be complaining about — or celebrating — you can size up your potential competition.
For example, if you punch in the keywords you find associated with these negative reviews and find that the search quality is good but few if any one at all (that is, zero) is using it on their website, then bingo.
Congratulations. You’ve found your opportunity. Now jump in and get there before everybody else — and their dog — does.
I fervently hope you’ll apply these tips to develop your best affiliate marketing strategy
Cheers.