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Social Media Platforms for Affiliate Marketing

Guest post by: Michael Farrell

Article Overview: Several of the Social Media sites have hundreds of millions of members and this vastness creates the callenge in Social Media Marketing, suggests Mike Farrell with aspenIbiz. Read this short post as it provides several factors to consider as you choose a social media platform for Affiliate Marketing.

Social Media Platforms for Affiliate Marketing

With close to 200 million people on Twitter, 600 million on Facebook and 100 million on LinkedIn, it isn't hard to find large groups with heartbeats. Thinning the herd, however, and finding the likely buyers of your company's product isn't nearly as easy.

This is the challenge in social media marketing: you need to cut through the vastness and somehow locate, and engage with your target market. The effort must begin before you even push out your first tweet or status update, in fact. Take a look at the demographics of the major social media platform to see if the right people are even there.

Here are four factors to consider as you choose a social media platform for affiliate marketing.

1. If you want to engage with women, your best bet is - believe it or not - MySpace. Twitter and Facebook do not have large gender skews". MySpace, meanwhile, has plenty of women - 64 percent of the user base, in fact.

2. Twitter. Well, you'll find them on Facebook, too. Twenty-seven percent of Twitter users pull down more than $75,000 a year, with 23 percent of Facebook users crossing that threshold. MySpace is for the less affluent: 63 percent of the site's users make less than $50,000 a year.

3. A substantial 37 percent of Facebook users are age 45 or older, compared to 28 percent for Twitter and 24 percent for MySpace. So, it seems safe to bet that a larger percentage of Facebook users watch golf and have dinner at 4:30 in the afternoon.

4. An education doesn't mean you have to speak in long sentences, I guess. With 37 percent of its users holding at least a bachelor's degree, Twitter's user base is the most educated.

So, how does this help you out? Well, it's nice to have a sense of whether your target market is even available on a particular social media platform before you invest you time and capital in it. Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Instead of pulling the trigger before thinking, spend some serious time monitoring different social media platforms and doing extensive research before deciding where to commit your company's marketing cash and capabilities.

These are numbers to get you started, but you still have a lot more work to do. Remember: social media is no different from any other form of marketing. You need to think, plan and do it right. Otherwise, you might find yourself pushing your company's products on Friendster ... a move that isn't exactly value-accretive, right?

This blog, and related posts, will continue to provide a blueprint for making money online with Affiliate Marketing. You will find step-by-step road maps for various parts of the Affiliate Marketing business. You will find tools, education, training, and support. And you will find a community of like minded entrepreneurs that are using the Internet to get out of debt, build wealth, and secure their financial future forever.

Finally, I want to thank Amy Porterfield and her work with Social Media Marketing Machines at Traffic Geyser and Social Media Examiner.

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Article Tags: Affiliate Marketing, Make Money Online, Mike Farrell aspenIbiz, Social Media, Work From Home



Related Forum Posts
Re: Should Evan add a "Social Media Marketing" category to the f - Hi, Online Marketing would be a great title, and having sub categories would make it even better, there would plenty of categories to choose from, Social Media, SEO, Article Marketing and yes even Affiliate Marketing to name just a few, great looking site btw Jeff, take care, Carol
Re: Kevin needs "social glue" ideas - Hi, I like the idea of "10 items that could act as "social glue" because I am an internet marketer. But I agree with the rest that the 10 recent post is nice. Maybe we should open up a new section in the forums on Social Media...or Social Media Marketing. I will tell you that the world is about 1 1/2 behind when it comes to understanding social media. Building a section now will put EvanCarmichael.com is a great position a year down the road when people realize Social Media can produce more traffic than SEO. Jeff
Re: Affiliate Marketing - Open for Discussion - Carol, Mary and David - thanks for your great input and insight on Affiliate Marketing! This is the kind of discussion I was hoping for in this thread. There are pros and cons to Affiliate Marketing, just as there are to any business. As has been suggested, he best policy is to proceed with caution and do some research before jumping in. As Carol has recommended, this topic thread in the EvanCarmichael.com forum is the ideal place to ask questions and seek further input on available Affiliate Marketing programs. If a person is serious about building an online business and is interested in Affiliate Marketing plans, they should approach the process as they would any other form of business. Research, ask questions, compare opportunities, participate in forums on online business and Affiliate Marketing. GT :-]
Re: Kevin needs "social glue" ideas - [quote="WebBizIdeas.com":gvtxsu7g]Hi, I like the idea of "10 items that could act as "social glue" because I am an internet marketer. But I agree with the rest that the 10 recent post is nice. Maybe we should open up a new section in the forums on Social Media...or Social Media Marketing. I will tell you that the world is about 1 1/2 behind when it comes to understanding social media. Building a section now will put EvanCarmichael.com is a great position a year down the road when people realize Social Media can produce more traffic than SEO. Jeff[/quote:gvtxsu7g] Hi Jeff, Thanks for the suggestion. Why don't you start a new post (with a poll) to see if there's enough interest in your idea for a social media section?
Re: Should Evan add a "Social Media Marketing" category to the f - Just as an update, Evan has extended the poll's expiration date and says he'd like to see at least 25 "yes" votes before implementing the new category. Moreover, it would probably be called "Online Marketing" instead of Social Media Marketing".


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