This morning I walked along the river to our local farmer’s market which, at this time of year, had transformed into a Christmas Market and the place was buzzing.
We all love farmer’s markets because you can connect directly with the person who made or gathered whatever you’re buying. That’s harder to replicate online but that personal touch is not only possible, it’s highly desirable.
Humanize your content as much possible and you’ll build far better connections with your prospects and visitors. Which, in simple terms, means they will buy more from you.
With that in mind, I’m going to focus on affiliate marketing this week because this is one area that absolutely demands that targeted, personal touch these days.
Your prospects and visitors want to feel that you understand them, their problems and what they need so they will then trust the solutions you offer them in the form of your promotions.
It can be hard, however, to keep coming up with the kind of great, targeted content they need which is why my first suggestion for you is a brilliant tool that will help you do so in far less time.
Just answer 18 simple questions and the Content Idea Generator will generate literally hundreds of great ideas for blog posts, articles, tweets, white-papers and e-books, videos, podcasts, press releases and just about any other kind of content that will attract more visitors to your website. And it won’t cost you a bean.
You can find it here:
http://www.contentideagenerator.com/
OK, so you now have tons of content ideas but how do you know which ones will work best in your chosen niche? I used to recommend Buzzsumo but they only offer an unpaid trial that lasts 14 days – rather than sign up for that, I suggest you check out the alternatives offered here:
http://nocodewebscraping.com/buzzsumo-alternative-free-tools/
Of course, you’ll want to share your affiliate links within your content and naturally you’ll want to cloak those, not just so they look less salesy but also to protect your commissions.
My preferred link cloaker is Pretty Link and the Lite version works just fine:
https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/pretty-link/
You’ll also want to keep an eye on how those links are performing so you can tweak them to suit your audience even more closely. ClickMeter is a link, affiliate, and conversion tracker all in one and contains over 100 no cost features that you can use to track your performance and optimize your campaigns.
You can find it here:
http://clickmeter.com/signup-free
Social media is another important arena for your affiliate links and, as I have taught, Pinterest is permitting direct affiliate links once more. This is wonderful for affiliate marketers as it is such a superb source of traffic and a place where you can really engage through well-chosen images.
For some great tips on how to make the most of those Pinterest affiliate links, go here:
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/3-tips-to-use-affiliate-links-on-pinterest/
Finally, here are 14 tips to really make your affiliate sales rock…I’m pleased to see that Tip #1 chimes exactly with what I have been teaching you here:
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/smmworld/how-to-sell-more-products-through-affiliate-sales/
Your TED talk this week is truly magical and will teach you how to connect with anyone – a skill we all need in life as well as in business:
