Affiliate marketing and Facebook - some questions...

Hi jrodefeld,

Puzzle.

I began using Facebook for marketing the first year it became available to do so. You ask some good questions and you obviously want to take action. Good and good.

The situation for you is a bit like a puzzle.

The subject is a big one and, in its entirety, you can view it as one large puzzle. What you'll find in this thread is that you'll receive some of the puzzle pieces. The way to build up the entire puzzle is to take the pieces and use them as a springboard to discover the other pieces; some of which you'll find elsewhere on WF, others you'll gain through experience.

To get you started, I'll give you the first few pieces of the puzzle.

Direct Messaging.

The first thing you need to do is stop direct messaging other Facebook users. This seems like an ideal approach to grow your reach but it's bad for a couple of reasons.

A. Account.

Facebook will consider the practice spam and so will many of the people you contact. I'm actually surprised you've made it to 1,100 friends. If you continue, you'll get your account limited and then banned, or just banned right away.

B. Collection.

One big aspect of IM is audience collection. You've collected, for instance, 1,100 targeted consumers. But 1,100 is a low figure compared to the number you could be collecting by using professional resources.

- Email List.
- Facebook Page.
- Facebook Group.
- Other Socials.
- YouTube.
- Any other owned platforms (such as a forum).

Furthermore, you need an audience collection platform that affords you greater ability to market. The platforms I mention have more functionality for marketing and, therefore, help you communicate with and grow your audience far more effectively.

Niche.

From what I gather, you're working in the IM/ MMO niche. With you being new to marketing (that's what I gather) then you're in the wrong niche. You're especially in the wrong niche when using the content marketing approach.

Content marketing is about sharing content in order to stimulate interest in your brand. In order to do this effectively, you need to understand the subject-matter of the content and the audience who receives that content.

A thorough understanding of the niche is required.

What I'd suggest is you rethink your niche and decide on one where you have experience and knowledge of both the subject-matter and the audience. Both of those elements are vital in terms of your effectiveness.

Facebook.

To finish off here, let me just give you 3 tactics to consider when using Facebook for marketing.

1. Have a Page. Use that page to share a combination of (mostly) free content and (limited) monetized content.

2. Join relevant groups and become a valuable member. Engage the media in a non-promotional manner. (And be sure to choose groups that allow what I'm about to suggest in C below.) Using this approach, you'll increase the trust you have in the eyes of admin and Facebook.

3. Never make direct media posts to Facebook groups. Instead, post media to your Facebook Page and then share that media to groups. But share carefully. Never share the same post more than once a day and never share media to the same group more than once a day. It depends on the age of your Facebook account, but if it's relatively new (and it sounds like it is) limit your sharing to under half a dozen a day, just to be on the safe side. By sharing in this way, you'll not only be exposing your media to the target audience, you'll be exposing your Page, and thereby growing that page AND traffic to your media. The real trick here is to share non-monetized media and have your monetized media on your Page for consumers to find. (Pin your monetized.)

Springboard.

Big subject (puzzle), as I say. Hopefully others will chip in. If not, take a look at the Social Media forum on WF and then branch out by using search.

All the best!

Cheers,

Tom

Yes, you need to be particularly careful with social media as Tom said, not to get your account shut down or limited. Keep your content to a page that you create. I would like to add something to what was already said and that is when Tom mentioned above that you need to offer more free than monetized content, this rings true for basically every channel these days, not just social media, email marketing, blogs, etc.

Trust is basically a thing of the past these days until it is earned through diligent supplying of relevant and in demand media content serving your niche whatever that is or may be in the future. The ratio is very skewed you may think because it is not give and take. It's more like give, give give, give, give some more and then take.

That's the nature of the beast for primary reasons of so many scams plastered all over the place online in the past (and still some in the present). So build trust, build a following, subtly (non sales manly) offer additional content at a price. These principals apply totally to social media, FB included.

To recap:

1) Know your FB TOS by heart before blindly jumping into things like FB messaging, friend requests (also search for FB marketing best practices and read up)
2) Be sincere and think of the audience before thinking of yourself your monetization potentials). Give give give and the money will come naturally to you with the right related offers.