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Is the use of social sites such as Twitter or Facebook necessary in order to succeed in affiliate marketing? If you're a cut-to-the-chase kind of person and want a yes or no, the answer is no. If you'd like a little explanation of my reasons for saying that—and possibly a little rambling—read on.
Social media marketing is big, there's no doubt. It seems like every time you turn around, the words Twitter, Facebook, or MySpace, and many others, are smacking you in the face. If you're not using them at this point, constantly hearing about them can get a little annoying, can't it? In fact, if you're irritated enough, you might even be "boycotting" them in protest.
So should you worry that not jumping on the social media bandwagon will hurt your affiliate business? No, I don't think so.
Social marketing definitely has its place. And, done well, it certainly won't hurt you. But if you're building niche affiliate sites, it is by no means necessary. In my opinion, it might even be a detriment in some cases because you might get carried away with the social sites and not give your sites the attention they deserve: creating lots of interesting, well written, and helpful content.
Besides, social traffic is generally not buying traffic. Your main goal in social media marketing is more to network with others than to attract buyers, so it has more of an indirect benefit than you might be thinking. In other words, you can't expect that each tweet to Twitter will not result in X number of sales. Rather, you'll be building relationships through these sites, improving your reputation, and creating trust in the information you're putting out there.
So these sites can be very valuable in your overall marketing strategy. But they shouldn't be your focus to the exclusion of writing good content for your site. You're better off putting 95% of your effort, if not more, into building your affiliate sites and obtaining backlinks. These activities will do the most to help you build authority and climb the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
By doing that you'll capture the buyers out there who are actively using the search engines to find information on your topic, and that is job one if you want success in affiliate marketing.
I LOVE my “job.” Affiliate marketing takes work, but it doesn’t feel like work.
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