Using Social Media for Affiliate Marketing

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Today, social media uses a wide range of different social networking platforms to help its users with the creation and sharing of ideas, information, personal interests, and hobbies by establishing virtual networks. Affiliates can benefit from these groups that use web-based applications to communicate, interact, and connect. Affiliates participate by generating the content, for example with comments, articles, photos, videos. Social media is an effective communication and affiliate marketing channel that is available to individuals, small and large businesses at very low cost with the ability to share this content in real-time. But how do you start your affiliate marketing on social?

To take part affiliates and digital marketers must first register with their chosen social media platforms and create a user profile by adding their user information to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Pinterest depending on their social media objectives. Once registered, the user can connect with other users or groups of users and in this way creating networks of potential partners and even customers. In order to access these platforms, affiliates have to use the social media application or software via desktops, laptops, notepads, or by downloading and setting up the media application in smartphones.

Why use social media platforms for affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing has grown in popularity in the past ten years and has become a very important customer acquisition channel for internet retailers and a key performance marketing strategy. The main reason is that it connects digital marketers with online retailers to do business in a very straightforward way by enabling a merchant to promote its services to a wide range of affiliates in any location in a cost-effective way. By promoting the digital store, the affiliate gets paid a commission for the sales referred by his affiliate website; with both the affiliate and merchant using an affiliate tracking software to monitor impressions, clicks, sales, and commissions.

One of the easiest traffic channels available to affiliates are social media sites, they are simple and quick to set up and will help you to start driving sales and affiliate commissions. Using social media for affiliate marketing will also help you start building your brand and social media audience, however, make sure that you are also sharing quality content to your audience and that you are using the right social media platform for your business.

How do I choose the write social media platform for affiliate marketing?

Choosing which social media platform really depends on your social media objectives; are you aiming to build your brand or looking for lead generation. In any case. you need to consider which channels are used by your target audience, the channels that your competitors are using, and the type of content that is most likely to engage with your audience. With this in mind, we are going to consider a number of social media platforms that we believe are easy to set up at no cost and that can create the audience for your affiliate marketing campaigns.

How do I set up a Facebook page for affiliate marketing campaigns? 

As an affiliate marketer, you need to ensure that you are set up with the largest social media platform from day one. Facebook not only has the largest network, but it also offers many targeting options. Furthermore, it offers all types of audiences to both merchant and affiliate websites to promote any type of service or product. The first thing that an affiliate should do is to create their own Facebook page by just entering some basic information and update the profile.

Once you have created your own Facebook page, you should select a theme to focus on based on your personal interest or knowledge and promote related affiliate products in this page. You should also treat it as a regular and long-term marketing activity making sure that it delivers good quality and highly relevant content to your followers.

SEO for Facebook

As with a website, there are some basic SEO actions that you need to have in place for your Facebook page. The first thing is to get your Facebook page URL shortened to make it more readable for Google (you can get your shortened URL after getting 25 likes on your page). Getting back-links from reputable Facebook pages in your niche is also important for SEO purposes and always make sure that you include your relevant keywords at the start of the sentence in your status updates.

Buying Facebook likes Vs. Organic Facebook likes

Stay away from buying likes and instead focus on getting organic likes. You can start getting likes by letting your contacts know about your new Facebook page and ask them to “like” your page in order to get updates from you. The next step is to regularly engage with your audience by posting regularly (not spamming your followers), and as you do it, you’ll get a general feel for what works taking into account that posts with photos and videos get more likes.

Frequency of Facebook posts

As far as posting frequency, according to some social media experts, posting once per day is optimal with a maximum of two posts per day, while the social media platform HubSpot recommends posting at least 3 times per week. The timing of your posts is also important, and it depends on when your audience is online, to this end, affiliates should check this in the Facebook insights of your Facebook account, so it really depends on the needs of each individual business.

You can also start promoting your page via Facebook Groups, so is very important that you find the right group for your audience, join it, and make your own regular contributions. To be successful in these groups you need to be patient and make worthwhile contributions by participating in discussions, offering advice, and sharing valuable content

How do I use Twitter for affiliate marketing?

Twitter has been around since 2006 and has approximately 330 million monthly active users. Although it’s not as large as other social media platforms, it offers affiliates an additional marketing channel. For those of you that don’t know (firstly where have you been?! secondly read on) Twitter allows users to write short messages with a maximum of 280 characters per Tweet, giving users the chance to write very concise and snappy messages.

Using Twitter for affiliate marketing will help you to increase your brand awareness and most importantly, to start building your own audience of loyal followers. As you communicate regularly and build a closer relationship with your followers, many of them will become partners and deliver valuable leads in due course.

Setting up your Twitter account

Once you have signed up to Twitter, make sure that you have a good profile for your future visitors to get an idea of who you are, including a short description of you, hobbies, interests, and the URL of your website as well. The next step is to start getting followers to your Twitter account and by doing so increase your audience. You can get followers by following users in your niche first, post engaging posts with useful advice to your followers, retweet advice from trusted users and as an additional option, you can increase the number of followers by running paid campaigns.

When running affiliate marketing campaigns via Twitter, it’s also very important to get the timing of your Tweets right based on what type of business you have. B2B companies, for example, get the most out of Twitter when they post on weekdays whereas, for B2C companies, weekends are the most engaged. To boost the engagement of your Tweets it’s advisable to use images ad hashtags. Hashtags are vital for affiliate marketing as they tell the relevancy of the content to users and find relevant hashtags for words about your product or service, for example, #AffiliateMarketing, #MakeMoney and add them to your Twitter post.

Twitter affiliate marketing allows you to monetize your social media following by adding offers from affiliate programs relevant to your audience and Twitter account content. As you become an expert in your affiliate niche, then you can start promoting your products and services from different affiliate merchants and by doing so, earn commissions. Winning!

How do I use Instagram for affiliate marketing?

Instagram is a great platform for affiliate marketing because it gives you the chance to monetize your audience easily. Instagrammers can promote an affiliate merchants’ products by placing a discrete affiliate link in published content. In exchange, the Instagram affiliate gets paid the commission percentage once a service has been purchased by a member of their audience.

One of the main obstacles when promoting affiliate products and services via Instagram is the limited opportunity to post links as only one link is permitted per biography, so affiliates need to be creative and promote the offers in alternative ways to be able to track performance. One way is to use the affiliate link in your Instagram biography to promote your top-performing service or product and change it as when required with new top-performing products.

Promoting Affiliate Offers in Instagram

You can also promote your affiliate offers by just writing it on the images as a text overlay and use a tool to shorten the long tracking URL, for example, Bit.ly. Instagram affiliates can also use coupons instead of tracking links and display the coupon as a text overlay on images to enable affiliate tracking. Finally, make sure you add the coupon or tracking link supplied by the affiliate to the image description and add a call to action. Making sure that you use high-quality images, videos, and hashtags in the description of the images are vital.

How do I use YouTube for affiliate marketing?

YouTube is the leading video sharing platform on the internet that allows users to upload, share, and comment on videos as well as subscribing to other YouTube users. YouTube is the second largest search engine and the second most visited website after Google. The platform has launched in over 91 countries and is available in 80 different languages making it the second-largest social media platform with 1.9 billion logged-in users per month.

The above statistics show the vast potential that the YouTube social media platform can offer for running affiliate marketing campaigns, making online video a great medium to reach and engage with your audience.  As with other social media channels, you can monetize your video content as part of your affiliate marketing campaigns by creating videos and placing affiliate links in the video and the video descriptions. Affiliates can also place a small image overlay on the video with the tracking link.

Tracking affiliate marketing on YouTube

Affiliate marketers can use any of the tracking methods above to redirect the user to the affiliate website or affiliate landing page, where the user will make the purchase and generate the corresponding commission. To this end, there are a number of video formats that affiliate marketers can use to drive traffic to the affiliate merchant and earn commissions from these sales. Examples of suitable video types are Product reviews, Comparison Videos, How-to Videos, and Best of Videos.

So, affiliates can harness the potential of YouTube videos by setting up a video channel and use it to deliver useful videos with good quality and engaging videos and monetize them with affiliate tracking links. As mentioned above you can place the affiliate links in the video description but be mindful of the number of links so you don’t come across as spammy.

Social media platforms are ideal for promoting affiliate marketing campaigns and it’s up to you to decide which one is most suitable for your promotional campaigns. These platforms offer a great opportunity for building your brand online, growing your own audience of followers, and generate leads, sales, and commissions.

Monetize your social media traffic by joining a high paying affiliate program that also pays you a recurrent commission, Graphic and Web pays a high 50% lifetime recurring commission to all its affiliates, we also accept applications and traffic from all geos. Our affiliate program is free to join and offers affiliates support via email, chat, and Skype. 

Sketch of a logo design

Minimalist logo design

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Minimalist logo design.

Strip your design down to the bare essentials and discover how simplicity can make your logo stronger. Plus, get design tips for the logo creation process, from research to final product.

Sketch of a logo design

Design by George Bokhua

Less is more.

Clean lines, geometric shapes and deceptively simple design are the hallmarks of minimalist design. A minimalist logo strips away unnecessary embellishments and colours to create a mark that is just as impactful as an intricate design, if not more so.

Don’t confuse minimalism with a plain or unfinished look. Minimalist logos may be simple, but they are not simplistic. If you want a logo design that does a lot with a little, minimalism might be for you. Or, if you’re after a clean, modern logo to refresh your brand, you might find inspiration in minimalist design principles.

Why go minimal?

Minimal logos don’t rely on intricate type treatments or detailed adornments to be effective. Their effectiveness stems from the strength of the design alone.

Minimalistic logos typically use simple shapes and monochromatic colour palettes, so they translate well across multiple mediums and sizes. From a business card to a billboard, a brand or company logo should read clearly and effectively. The less detailed your design, the more quickly your audience will recognise it.

For these reasons, minimalism is a great place to start any design, even if you don’t want to end up with a minimalist logo. The tenets of minimalism should be part of all strong logos, so that no matter where you take your design, you’ll have a solid foundation at the core.

A minimalist logo design

Design by George Bokhua

A minimalist logo design

The pre-design process: Visualising brand identity.

Do your research.

A business logo is more than a mark; it embodies the company’s visual identity. Visual identity encompasses everything from a company’s colours and website design to its packaging, fonts and, of course, logo. Get to know the client and their field extensively before you start to sketch. Ask about the client’s mission, values, attributes, audience, competitors and more. All of this background information should inform your design.

Gather design inspiration.

This step is just as important for the client as it is for you. “I like to gather visual examples to see what resonates with them,” says creative director Sarah Giffrow. “A lot of times clients know what they want, but don’t quite have the language to communicate it.” This is where mood boards come in.

“A mood board is good to have as a shared reference point throughout the process,” says Giffrow. Curate a collection of logos, images, colours, visual cues and typography to present to your client. With a visual guide in front of you, you can start to hone in on the direction you and your client want to go.

A person sketching various minimalist logo designs

Sketch and iterate logo ideas.

Now that you’re armed with insight and inspiration, it’s time to sketch. Make rapid iterations and make a lot of them. Try to let the ideas flow without being too selective; there will be time for refinement later.

“Don’t show clients sketches,” advises designer George Bokhua. “It can be hard for clients to imagine the potential or final product. I’ve always regretted showing sketches, because there were some very good ideas that got declined and bad ideas chosen that had no future.”

Another tip for this stage is to work in black and white only. A good design will work with or without colour. Plus, this makes lighter work for you and keeps clients focused on design rather than colour palettes.

Develop a few logos and present.

Once you have a handful of solid logo concepts, pick a few to fully develop and present to the client. Two or three is a good number to start with. “Don’t overwhelm the clients with options,” advises Bokhua. “They trust you, the logo designer, to show the best few.” Some clients might initially want more, but a few strong design concepts are worth more than 20 half-baked ideas.

A minimalist logo design

Design by George Bokhua

Tips for making a minimal logo design.

Keep it simple.

Logos naturally lend themselves to minimalism, since you have such a small space to work with. Try to pack in too many details and your design will get muddy at small sizes.

Flat logo design (two-dimensional design with no perspective added) is another popular way you can keep a minimalist profile. Take the famous Nike Swoosh, for example. The simple shape isn’t intricate or dimensional, yet it is one of the most recognisable logos on the planet, thanks to the strength and sparseness of the design.

Simplicity should also transfer into the way you use colour. Minimalism in interior design often features monochromatic palettes and logo design is no different. Stick with the brand’s primary colour or just use black and white.

Stick to geometric shapes.

“I try to use clean, geometric shapes and stick to 45- or 90-degree angles,” says Bokhua. As opposed to more illustrative approaches, minimalist logos tend to keep shapes neat and proportional. For a simple logo that is proportional, graphic designers often use basic shapes like rectangles, triangles and ellipses. You can use rules like the golden ratio to create compositions that are naturally pleasing to the eye.

Use space wisely.

“Space is so important in minimalism,” says Giffrow. Keep elements to a minimum to maintain an airy feel to your logo. This will ensure nothing feels too busy.

With limited room to play, negative space becomes a critical factor in minimalist design. Pay attention to the in-between and white spaces just as much as you do the places you’ve filled; these areas are opportunities to maximise both meaning and space. The universal yin-yang symbol is a great example of how you can use negative space to inform your design.

Choose simple and stark typography.

A customised logo isn’t just designing a pictorial mark; typography is crucial and can make or break your logo. Most brands will include a wordmark or lettermark (which is just the company name) as part of the logo package. This means that your brand must be recognisable by its typeface as well.

“I see a lot of good logos paired with generic text that doesn’t look harmonious with the artwork,” says Giffrow. “Nail down the type first and that will help to anchor the whole piece.”

Most minimal logos use a sans serif font, as serifs tend to add detail and give the logo a more traditional look. But there are certain times when a serif typeface suits the brand name and identity. Play with spacing or tweak individual letter forms to transform a standard typeface into a customised font.

A minimalist logo design

Design by George Bokhua

Master the art of minimalism.

“It’s hard to come up with something that hasn’t been done before,” says Bokhua. “Go in with a clean slate. Don’t look at too many logos beforehand, because they can get in your head and pop up in your design subconsciously.” You might find that too much time looking at other logos constrains you instead of fuelling your imagination.

Still, you’ll need to look at some logos to build your mood board and get your creative juices flowing. Find design inspiration on Behance to see the latest logo design trends in action and get ideas for your new logo.

A unique logo won’t happen overnight. Expect to put in the time with a lot of background research and many iterations to arrive at something that stands out. But the work is more than worth it. Brand recognition is the name of the game and a memorable, easy-to-read minimalist logo is your best bet to create a timeless and unique visual identity.