Social media is the hottest sector on the Internet right now and only getting bigger and more powerful. This means, as an affiliate, you need to be actively using social media sites to promote yourself and your websites/blogs. Here are some practical ideas for using Social Media to enhance your affiliate marketing efforts.

Create Your Presence - I always recommend choosing a username that you can use to sign-up on all the best social networking sites. It usually has to be fairly short, ex. mine is experienceads. I use this username on the majority of the social media sites to keep things consistent. Use Username Check to see if your prospective username is available on all the social networks. It’s also a really cool tool to use to get signed up on all the top social networks. Once you get yourself signed-up for the social networks you should look to add friends or followers depending on the type of site it is. By “following” people on Twitter for example, they may follow you back and this is what builds your following. Also, the more content you post out there, the more people will follow you that read your content. You can also create other identities to promote in a particular niche. For example, if you are in the online dating niche, you can create a username like: EvansDatingAdvice and build out a following specifically talking about issues related to dating and singles. I recommend starting out with your main identity and branching out from there. The more identities you have the harder it will be to manage. Also, it’s important to complete your profile on each social networking site with unique content about yourself and what you do.

Join Ping.FM - Ping.fm is probably my favorite social media tool because it allows you to effortlessly update your “status” on all your social networks through one interface (and even through IM). How cool is that! Once you sign up at Ping.fm, they will ask you to enter all your usernames and passwords for your social networking sites. And, it also gives you the links to sign-up for new accounts on all those sites you aren’t on already, so you can get them into Ping.fm. Once you have entered all your usernames and passwords, you can then “ping” out your message, blog post url, site page url, personal update (what you are doing a the moment), and anything else you feel you want to share with the world. You have to keep it short though, usuallu under 140 charaters. This is known as “micro-blogging.” This is a great way to manage multiple social sites at the same time.

My Favorite Social Networks - I have been using social networks for years, before it was cool to do it. Now that it’s all the rage, it’s interesting to see how people go about connecting with each other and making friends and contacts. Some of my personal favorites for online marketing are: FaceBook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, and of course Twitter. There are many other niche social networking sites you can join to meet like-minded people to connect with and do business or just make friends. You will develop your own list of favorite social networks based on your interests.

Launching your Own Social Network - The Internet has come along way and the best things are still free. If you want to launch your own social networking site you should check out Ning. Ning is the easiest and fastest way to set-up your very own social network, with tons of great features. It truly is amazing so you should check it out and experiment with it. Here is one of mine for you to review: Cost Per New Social Network. You will see a link on the site to launch your own social network.

Social Media/Networking Etiquette - Social media, like anything else online, has the potential to be abused and mis-used. If you go about it the right way you will do well with it, however if you go about it the wrong way you are likely to not get far. Here are some suggested tips to maintain good social media etiquette:
- Don’t just go looking for people on Twitter asking for recommendations and pasting them your affiliate link or saying you have tried something and recommend it when you have not. This is very annoying and not genuine at all. People are usually hip to this and will drop you and not be friends with you. If you are going to respond to a users request for a recommendation on a product or service, make sure you are giving them good information and not just giving them your affiliate link. By providing good merchant or product reviews on your sites or blogs you can share the urls of your posts when it’s appropriate.
- Connect with People Genuinely - It’s always best to connect to people that will be receptive to your connection request. It’s not a contest to see how many people you can connect to, but a way to grow your network with quality connections you can do business with or learn from. Too many people try to build their networks through “open networking” which is not a good idea in my opinion.
- Share Stuff, Don’t Inundate - The whole point of social networking is to share information, links, news, and resources with people. Also, to keep them up-to-date on what you are doing in life. If you are constantly sharing items that are turning people off your network won’t grow and you will lose connections. Take your social networking seriously and it will be a great foundation to build on going forward.

Additional Benefits of Social Media/Networking - One of the biggest benefits of using social media sites are the SEO (search engine optimization) benefits. By announcing messages and sharing links through social sites you can get ranked in the search engines for those particular messages. Site’s like Twitter have excellent Google organic rankings and I frequently see my pings/updates ranking in Google. Also, when your connections and people on the social networks see your updates it creates traffic back to your site. It also causes your connections to comment on your post or update creating more interaction.

Social media and social networking are amazing tools for expanding your affiliate marketing endeavors. The more time and effort you put into it, the more you will get out of it. Let me know how you liked this article. I have many more tips and resources for using social media sites, so let me know and I will forward them over to you. You can reach me at: evan@experienceadvertising.com. Thanks!

We are pleased to announce that we have launched the PhotoCubbie.com affiliate program in the Commission Junction affiliate network. CJ is the largest and most powerful affiliate network, and PhotoCubbie’s great performing offer should do very well there. Photocubbie is a great performing photo and video sharing offer with a great payout. As social networks and sharing become more popular, PhotoCubbie will perform very well for affiliates. Members of PhotoCubbie get lots of great benefits include 100 free prints per month with their membership. If you are looking for a great photo affiliate program make sure to log into your CJ.com affiliate account and pull the banners and links. Let us know if you need assistance of any kind!

Are you looking for a great performing party supply and costumes affiliate merchant? And don’t forget about their wonderful selection of Pinatas! What a great way to make your next party a raving success. And their prices to consumers are excellent so your visitors will get great products at discount prices. Pinatas.com is a great converting website and the affiliate commission is good too. So, if you are looking for either a party supply affiliate program, costumes affiliate program, or a pinatas affiliate program…you can get all three with one great performing website in Pinatas.com! You can access the Pinatas affiliate links and banners in the Commission Junction affiliate network. Let us know if you would like to discuss or chat about effective affiliate strategies for promoting in these niches. We look forward to hearing from you!

Are you looking for a great converting online education affiliate program? There are many options out there but few have good conversion rates like CareersandEducation.com. The lead form is very short and great performing. Online education is a tremendous affiliate niche because of the large amount of search volume for keyword phrases related to online education, distance learning, online universities, and online degrees. We have keyword files available for the online education niche and the free site builder will be ready in a couple of days.  You can access the banners and in link is your Commission Junction affiliate account. Let us know if you want to discuss how to effectively promote in the online education affiliate niche.

Are you looking for a great performing eyeglasses and sunglasses affiliate program? We have a great perfromer for you in BestBuyEyeglasses.com. BestBuyEyeglasses is live on Commission Junction currently and you apply there to gain access to the banners and links. They have a large product catalog of name-brand, designer glasses of all kinds. Eyeglasses and sunglasses are great affiliate niches because there is a lot of search volume and few affiliate merchants operating in the space. We can work with you on various ways of generating website traffic like SEO, PPC, article marketing and offline marketing strategies. Be sure to ask us for keyword files, coupon codes and unique content to promote BestBuyEyeglasses.com! We look forward to working with you on the niche.

We are tremendously excited to announce that GlobalRebels.com has hired Experience Advertising to manage their Commission Junction affiliate program. GlobalRebels represents the hippest in clothing from well-established brands like: English Laundry, Fender, Jimi Hendrix, and DaVinci. These great brands bring great conversions for affiliate driven traffic. If you are looking to promote really great performing clothing lines, then GlobalRebels.com is for you. We are especially excited about the Jimi Hendrix clothing line. I personally own shirts from this collection and they are awesome in quality and uniqueness, with a lot of detail. Jimi would have been proud of this collection and how cool it looks. If you are looking to promote hip, rock and roll clothing from brands like English Laundry, Fender, Jimi Hendrix, and DaVinci you have to join the GlobalRebels.com affiliate program in Commission Junction. We can provide keywords, unique content, free site builder and other free resources for affiliate. Let us know if you would like to discuss promotional methods like SEO, PPC, article marketing, blogging, and other great ways to spead the word about this great affiliate program. We look forward to hearing from you! Now get out there and build the web!

We are very excited to announce that we are now the official affiliate management company for the Careers & Education affiliate program in Commission Junction. If you are looking for a great converting education offer, this one’s for you. The site features a quick and easy lead form that will generate great conversion rates. You get paid on every valid lead generated through your affiliate banners and links. We will have it up in the free site builder shortly so you can build a free site/blog and start promoting and earning commissions. Online education is one of the hottest niches in affiliate marketing, with so many people looking to further their education in order to get a better job. We can work with you on effective ways to promote this online edu offer. Some of the ways include: organic seo, PPC bidding, article marking, and other effective affiliate strategies. Lead generation is a great way to earn money with affiliate marketing. We are psyched to have a great performing education offer for you. Please let us know if you would like any more information. We look forward to hearing from you!

Twitter.com is one of those things you just have to check out and use for your networking. You can sign up for an account and then build the number of people you are “following”. Its all about getting updates from people and giving updates on what you are currently doing. You can send people messages to see if you can do business with them or network in some way. You can respond to peoples “tweets” and get a quick dialogue going about the topic. You can search on the site and then read the tweets of people on the twitter network. Once you find some interesting things you can see who authored them and follow that person. That person will get an email that you are following them, and then might reutn the favor and follow you. The more you use Twitter the more potential connections you can make with people. It really is an amazing networking tool. Corporations are using Twitter now to get out deals to customers. Coupon sites are using twitter got out deals from all types of merchants so it s really powerful word of mouth marketing tool. I highly recommending joining www.Twitter.com and start tweeting away! Look for people to add the people you are following. Then add them! Make sure to use it daily, it’s a really powerful social media tool  that is still evolving. There are tons of cool widgets for twitter and you can plug it into other networking applications like Plaxo. If you have any questions about how to use Twitter, let me know. Thanks for reading.  

BistroMD.com features a wonderful selection of physician-designed meals and diet plans. The food is excellent and they are taking the meal delivery vertical by storm. BistroMD.com has a really great affiliate program in the Commission Junction Affiliate Network. We are very pleased to be the exclusive affiliate management company of BistroMD.com in the CJ Network. BistroMD.com has excellent EPCs and is one of the best performing affiliate programs in their category. If you would like to apply to join the BistroMD.com affiliate program, log into your CJ.com account and click Get Links, then search for BistroMD. Then apply and I will approve you right away. We can provide you with keywords, content, and other tools to help with your affiliate efforts. We have an excellent new site builder tool that we be live with new templates so stay tunes to the site builder. We look forward to partnering with you on this wonderful affiliate program!

Most people realize that publishing original content is the best way to increase your search engine traffic.  When you add new pages to your site, like articles and product reviews, you give the search engines like Google and Yahoo something new to comeback and process. Search engines love it when they find new content on your site because they are eager to get fresh content into their search results. That’s why blogs and websites powered by content management systems like Word Press do well in the search engines and make it easier for their site owners to publish new pages. The search engines are also looking at other factors relating to how long people are staying on your pages once they have arrived at them through organic search results. The search engines want to see how “sticky” your website or blog is by looking at visitor behavior on your site, so its important to write good copy that readers will continuing reading and stay a while. If visitors are “bouncing” from your site really quickly back to the search results or to other urls, it’s not a good reflection on your site.

So what type of articles should you be writing for your site? It depends on the theme of the site, but you should generally write about things that intuitively people would want to read on that type site. I’m a big fan of putting up niche sites on deticated .coms.  Which is why we built our affiliate site building tool. For example, if you are promoting an online dating affiliate program, you would want to write about how to meet new people and the general benefits of online dating. You could write about find a date in Miami or other cities and states because people search for “Online dating in Miami, Florida” for example. If you have a deticated page on your site for hundreds of topics related to online dating, over time you will build your organic traffic to your site. Search eninges also love it when you add content daily or even several times per day. They also generally like longer pieces and that goes back to the stickyness of your site. Another smart thing to do is to add a newsletter sign-up box to your site, this can be done using a “plug-in” with Word Press for example. Once you have some people signed up to your site’s newsletter you can send them monthly e-newsletters and expose them to articles and affiliate program banners.

Writing is one of those things that you should seek to get better at over time. I have found that the more I read books and online editorials, and write, the better my writing has become. I have taken some basic writing courses in the past, but reading well-written articles and books others have written can provide excellent insight into good writing styles. Typing speed is also a big factor in getting more content online. Let me know if these tips help. I look forward to working with all affiliates and future affiliates!