I’ve been using Twitter for a while now and having got over the initial excitement of reading what celebrities eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner and the gloating to Jude about getting a reply from Schofe, it’s down to the more serious business of using it as an affiliate. Is it any good? Is it any use? Is there any point?
Kieron recently blogged about network presence on Twitter, and whilst there’s advantages of them tweeting there’s in fact a lot more an affiliate can gain from Twitter. To understand why it can be useful for affiliates you have to know that we work full time and have several things on the go at once.
As Loquax takes up a lot of time, it can often mean content or ideas for other sites (which we like to do as a break from running a user and time intensive service) are lacking. Or we’ve overlooked content ideas sent in the usual emails that appear late Friday evening! With Twitter, however, we have a constant flow of news, information and ideas for content tweeting around all day and every day.
So why is Twitter useful for us?
For example Red Nose Day recently tweeted about their Digital Red Noses. A brilliant idea that fits nicely in with Donate To. Up goes content and our job is done! It may not be affiliate linked, remember not everything has to be, but it’s useful relevant up to date content and something we’d have missed had it not been on Twitter.
Similarly Firebox announced the launch of the cool new Airwolf Remote Controlled Helicopter – something we’d not get to know about for a few days (if ever) if the information popped up via email. As we have a gadgets blog – we can then add a bit of content and pop in an old Airwolf video just for good measure.
For competition side of things Twitter is also very useful! For example the guys at Web User tweet when they have new giveaways. That means we can react “on Tweet” and update our database and let our users know that there are new prizes for them to win. By following Web User, and others via Twitter, it actually saves us time doing some of the mundane work and freeing up more time to do useful affiliate marketing.
And let’s not forget the social element!
The big advantage of Twitter is the social side as it’s great to engage in a bit of banter during the day with others in affiliate marketing. The communal spirit that makes AM a special business is alive and tweeting. There’s no “rutting stag” arguments and it’s great to “chat” every now and then about anything and everything.
Of course Twitter won’t be for everyone, it’s perhaps too instant for part time affiliates for example, but if you’re like us and updating content day in day out it’s a very useful tool for keeping in touch with a wide range of subjects, websites, people and information services.
Not convinced… well you can even Tweet the love of your life and get them to put the kettle on (that’s me in trouble now!).
