Daniel’s Internet Marketing and Piano Blog

Affiliate Marketing & Social Networking. Combine? January 25, 2009

Of course!  Whenever one is promoting any kind of product or service as an affiliate, all possible revenue streams must be explored, social networks included. 

The best part about social networks though is that, of course, it is all FREE, which is all the more better to the marketer ONLY if he/she knows how to position him/her self within the social networking community.

I recently read an article titled “Generating Free Leads through Social Networking,” by Jan Shimano.  Unfortunately, it did not have very much to say about how to market through these networks, other than to describe what networks should be used, which of course the big 3: Myspace, Twitter, and Facebook.

However, despite a lack on instruction, it did have a couple nuggets of wisdom.  It talked about a NEW site that’s looking to get pretty big in the Network Marketing Industry, and that is betternetworker.com which happens to be by Mike Dilliard (google him, a legend of MLMs and Network Marketing).

The most important thing about marketing in social networks, he said, was that you can’t just pitch like you would in an advertisement.  People in MLMs are the craziest pitchers of our time, which is why at betternetworker, you aren’t allowed to do that, but you must provide great content and information instead, as opposed to just HYPE.

In order to be sucessful, you must develop a relationship, and have interactions with your friends and followers.  Only AFTER you’ve built a following of people, interested in who you are, what you are like, etc.  Only THEN can you let them know about an affiliate opportunity of yours, but only CASUALLY, because remember, you aren’t SELLING your friends, you’re letting them know about something you thought was cool.

And that’s a WHOLE different ball game.