How To Use Affiliate Links Across Social Channels
Blog/Website
As one of the most obvious tools when thinking of mentioning products or brands via affiliate links, your blog or website is a key space for producing affiliate links. When looking to do so, there are 4 ways you can do this:
- Automatically (via Convert-a-Link) turn any direct links to advertisers into affiliate links.
- Via text links built using our link builder tool.
- Using feeds to create comparisons between products or prices.
- Via banners, content widgets or other pieces of creative.
When using affiliate links on Instagram, you can add links to your bio, in the captions of the pictures you post or via instashop – which allows you to link straight through to advertisers or products (which has the added advantage of being easily disclosed). You can also consider shortening the links to make them look more attractive (for example, using bit.ly). A word of warning, use hashtags sparingly, good use could see you picked up with a trend, whereas overuse may make you less likely to be noticed.
With Facebook, you can add affiliate links to your posts or on your page, add buttons containing affiliate links on your page (for example, a ‘shop now’ button) or add affiliate links to Facebook groups owned by others (you must be relevant and not spammy when doing this). There are a number of considerations when using Facebook, which depends on the nature of what you are posting. Deal focused pages will have lots of links and offers, and so your content will be frequently refreshed, whereas content focused sites will be more subtle and less frequent.
To monetize your Twitter offering, you can add affiliate links into your tweets linking to your website or product page. Using your Twitter in this way will depend on the reason for having a Twitter account, but more often that not it would be a case of simply selecting an advertiser or product to feature in your tweet.
YouTube
Putting links into the description of your videos is a great way to incorporate affiliate marketing to your page. If you want to build on this, remember you can also add links within the video content itself. Just be mindful that the links should relate to the content of the video and mentioned in the video if it is featured in the description – for example “click on the link in our description to see this product for yourself”. To highlight specific products during a certain time of your video, you can use video overlaying services such as taggled.
Snapchat
Although one of the fastest growing social media channels, affiliate links are yet to be utilized in Snapchat – in fact, no type of link can. However, the channel can still be used as a tool to accompany your site as it’s a great tool to generate interest and intrigue. You can use Snapchat to keep users up to date with live events you are involved in, for example taking people ‘behind the scenes’ of your blog/site or to raise awareness of new blog posts where they can then find the affiliate links.
Google+
When looking to add affiliate links to your Google+ page, simply use the “add link” button which enables you to add the affiliate links with the post itself. A note to sit alongside this method is that with the “add link” button the links carry an SEO benefit while those added within posts tend to automatically be “no follow”. In terms of affiliate links this is irrelevant since they get ignored but a useful tip none the less.
Since the news that the ban had been lifted on affiliate activity via Pinterest, it’s an exciting time to benefit from the channel. There are a variety of ways which you can publish your affiliate links – for example you’re able insert your affiliate links on existing personal boards, create new boards purely focused on affiliate products or post affiliate links to existing group boards. For more information about utilizing Pinterest, you can read our piece we released around the subject here.
Perhaps not an immediate channel that comes to mind when looking to insert affiliate links, LinkedIn has great potential to enhance your offering by being able to include affiliate links within our own posts which will reach all connections associated with you. You’re also able to post links within interest groups you are joined to and of course use the publications section of your LinkedIn profile to link to your latest affiliate product review posts.
Please note: The industry has a duty to ensure those featuring content containing affiliate links are aware of the possible ramifications, encouraging them to state explicitly to consumers that a commercial relationship may exist.
For more information about anything featured please contact our Publisher Services Team.
