Twitter For Affiliate Marketers

The subject of Affiliate Marketing on Twitter has divided the social networking community. On one side, you have people who believe that any blatant marketing is wrong, while on the other side, you have people who believe that marketing is perfectly fine as long as it is related to the topic of your tweets.

If you feel that is appropriate to recommend affiliate products on Twitter, there are a few rules of etiquette that should be considered to ensure you do not alienate your followers for good.

Be Yourself

Be your genuine self and offer information that is useful to your followers that has no strings attached. Once you establish yourself then make a casual referral to your affiliate product. If you want this step to be successful, be sure that your affiliate site is of a high quality and that the product offered is relevant to your area of expertise. If you're just starting to do affiliate marketing on Twitter, the worst thing you can do right away is promote a product. Your followers will immediately see there is an ulterior motive to what appears to be free information and you will alienate them for good.

Short URLs

Since a large portion of Twitter employs short URLs, it is easy to disguise an affiliate link by using short URL services. If you are going to use any type of affiliate links with this service make sure you are providing notification to your follower that the link is indeed a recommendation for your product.

Link Affiliate Products Indirectly

Create a lot of high quality content on your blog and website with your affiliate link attached to it. Then use Twitter to offer additional information and provide tweets that reference your blog and your website. This will demonstrate to your follower that you care about offering useful information instead of simply marketing your business on Twitter.

Make Recommendations in Moderation

In addition to making genuine recommendations for products that are useful and high quality, remember to do so in moderation. One thing you shouldn't do is promote affiliate products too often, because this will just mean that your followers will start ignoring you and what you have to offer.

Be a Good Listener

Make it a habit of listening to what your followers are thinking so you know the appropriate way to respond. This includes listening to your follower?s thinking with regard to comments about their life. It becomes easier to respond appropriately the more you know about them. In addition to listening to your followers, listen to what they are saying about you by following their comments.

Since there is a lot of debate about using social networking sites for promoting affiliate products, it is best to follow the indirect methods we have described here if you are going to be successful with Affiliate Marketing On Twitter.