Q: What’s the best way to let my twitter following know that a link in one of my tweets points to an affiliate product? Is there an acronym I should use like (aff.)?
A: First of all, I’d say it’s really not valuable to anybody if you’re just going to post affiliate links to Twitter.
It’s far more useful, and it removes this issue, if your Tweet goes to a post of yours, where you pre-sell a product or service through persuasive, original content.
In Twitter, if you’re putting up a single Tweet direct to a merchant and simply broadcasting that people should buy, you are adding no value at all.
But when your Tweet links to your site, you can go on at length about why you recommend a product or service.
For more information on Twitter and affiliate marketing, see the discussion on the Affiliate Summit forum: Affiliates and Twitter – Does it work?
Video: Using Twitter as an Affiliate
Ask Shawn Collins your affiliate marketing question and it will be added on the affiliate blog.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Shawn, good point on going away from the idea of “simply broadcasting” there. Reminded me of Jeff Molander’s newest “Off the Hook Marketing” book where he also stresses that “broadcasting messages at customers” (be they coupons, promos, or even contests) is a poor approach which seldom leads to any substantial result. If, however, on Twitter we focus on “designing interactions” with our prospective customers, and create “meaningful exchanges, ‘give-and-takes’ that connect with sales,” our chances for reaping lasting results are significantly higher.
Having said this, I believe this guy (or gal) may have a good, and important, question-behind-the-question there: how do/should we let the “Twitter following know that a link points to an affiliate product”? If/when one does tweet a DTM link, how do you they this to stay compliant with the FTC’s disclosure rules, for example? And do we even have a universally accepted proven-to-satisfy-FTC way yet?
I haven’t seen much of a discussion on the use of some universal hashtag recently, but in the past it seemed #AFF was the most popular. Even so, that’s gibberish to the layman, so I don’t think it accomplishes anything.